Europe’s biggest political family is already preparing its 2029 election strategy to win back voters from the far right — even as its own members split over whether to work with those parties and how far to follow them on policy. The center-right European People’s Party chair, Manfred Weber, internally launched a “Win2029” task force two weeks ago. The main goal of the group will be to develop an attractive enough policy platform to take on the far right at the polls in three years’ time.
But interviews and internal meeting records reveal deepening disagreements over cooperation with far-right groups and how closely to align with them on migration, climate and social issues. Anything beyond the “battle” between EPP and the far right “will be of secondary importance,” echoed the conservative group’s spokesperson Pedro López de Pablo. Faced with that kind of rhetoric, we need to think of which alternatives we can offer to the people.” With the European Parliament not yet halfway through its current term, the task force marks an unusually early start to the EPP’s 2029 election preparations — and underscores the urgency party leaders feel as far-right parties gain ground across the bloc.
Led by Spanish MEP Esteban González Pons, the task force will help draft the party’s final electoral program. Talks are due to start at an October retreat in Sicily and continue through next spring’s EPP congress in Rome. EPP lawmakers are already wrestling with the choice ahead.
The divisions reflect different political realities across the party. In some countries, governing with the far right has become a political reality; in others, those parties remain the EPP’s main rivals and cooperation is a red line. Poles and Romanians oppose any alignment with the far right, while conservatives in Spain, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands have governed with them.
German lawmakers are divided, as some in Berlin start questioning the firewall against Alternative for Germany (AfD) given its recent electoral successes. Yet most German EPP members in Brussels remain opposed. Meeting notes from the past six months show the EPP attempting to maintain its firewall in the Parliament, with lawmakers repeatedly instructed to reject the far-right Patriots’ initiatives while backing similar proposals from the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists, home to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The EPP considers ECR an acceptable partner. To make an example of one of its lawmakers and quell criticism, the group went as far as to expel Slovenian MEP Branko Grims after he appeared at an event organized by the AfD. Yet the EPP cannot escape the temptation to go with far-right groups on sensitive issues where agreement with the Socialists and Democrats is harder to reach.
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