The European Parliament maintains the cordon sanitaire against Orbán’s Patriots and the Sovereign Nations of the German ultras
BRUSSELS, Jul 23 () –
The PP MEPs Javier Zarzalejos and Carmen Crespo were elected on Tuesday as presidents of the European Parliament’s committees on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and Fisheries, respectively, while the socialist Lina Gálvez will chair the committees on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality.
Sumar MEP Estrella Galán will also be one of the vice-presidents of the commission chaired by Zarzalejos, who will become the first PP MEP to hold this responsibility since he has legislative powers. In the previous legislature, this commission was also headed by a Spaniard, the socialist Juan Fernando López Aguilar.
On the other hand, the PP’s Dolors Montserrat will be the first vice-president of the Petitions Committee that she chaired in the previous legislature, the same position that her party colleague Esther Herranz will hold in the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee and the socialist Hana Jalloul in the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Former Equality Minister Irene Montero and PP MEP Rosa Estarás will be vice-presidents of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, and ERC MEP Diana Riba will be vice-presidents of the Committee on Culture and Education.
Likewise, the ‘popular’ Adrián Vázquez will go from being president of the Constitutional Affairs Committee in the previous legislature, when he occupied a seat for Ciudadanos, to holding one of its vice-presidencies.
Of the 20 committees in Parliament, seven will be chaired by the European People’s Party (EPP), five by the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), three by the Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), two by the Liberals (Renew), two by the Greens and one by the Left.
The European Parliament has thus succeeded in maintaining a cordon sanitaire around the newly created far-right groups in this legislature, the Patriots for Europe, promoted by the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, and the Sovereign Nations of Europe, created by the ultra-German party Alternative for Germany.
Meanwhile, ECR, led by the party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, is the only group to the right of the EPP in the hemicycle that has escaped isolation from the other parties after the President of the European Commission, the German ‘popular’ Ursula von der Leyen, extended a helping hand to them by considering them to be “pro-Europe, pro-Ukraine, anti-Putin, and pro-rule of law”.
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