French-speaking centrists Les Engagés could quit the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) political group in the next European Parliament legislature.
The leader of Les Engagés Maxime Prévot indicated to Le Soir this week that his party does not feel at home in the EPP anymore, often diverging from the group’s political line.
While the EPP describes itself as a centre-right movement, it has been taking increasingly conservative positions on issues such as climate change and migration. Les Engagés describes itself as a "progressive" centrist party, and have one MEP, Benoît Lutgen, who has broken with the group's line various times on these issues.
Most notably, he abstained on the vote for the EPP’s manifesto during the electoral congress in Bucharest in March, due to one of the programme's "flagship" projects – the Rwandan model for migration as conceived by the British Conservative Party. This involves transferring asylum seekers to "safe" third countries, in this case Rwanda, if their claim is rejected.
This "outsourcing" proposal echoes the EPP's toughening stance on migration issues in the build-up to the elections. Leader Maxime Prévot, speaking at an event with readers of Le Soir, called the fact that Belgium is not meeting its obligations to shelter asylum seekers, a "disgrace".
This political break is also seen on tackling climate change, where the EPP have led the watering down of key climate legislation, such as with laws on nature restoration or pesticides.
“The EPP is a gathering of centrists, which we are, and conservatives, which we are not," Prévot said. "We recognise ourselves much more in the line taken by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the Commission and initiator of the European Green Deal, than in that of Manfred Weber, the EPP leader in the European Parliament."
As a possible replacement, Prévot floated the idea of joining the European Democrats, who are part of Renew Europe, "but it would have to be debated and decided at a political assembly."
Double standards?
In light of the announcement, Les Engagés have come under fire from Ecolo, the French-speaking Green party, who accuse the centrist party of holding double standards on their public statements at the national level and how they vote in the European Parliament.
"They are very often aligned with the EPP position in voting strategies, whereas they will declare something else in Belgium," says Ecolo MEP Saskia Bricmont to La Dernière Heure (DH).
Les Engagés and other right-leaning parties have criticised Bricmont for posting on social media how Belgian parties voted on key legislation, something she wanted to respond to in an interview with DH.
"I question their desire for transparency," responded the Ecolo MEP. "If we communicate in this way from time to time on key votes, it is precisely because it is very difficult, particularly for citizens, to have access to these votes."
The Ecolo MEP told DH that she does this because there is often a discrepancy between the public statements of parties and their votes. "If there wasn't sometimes a gap between the two, if this transparency existed, we wouldn't need to communicate as we do."
To prove her point, Bricmont noted that Élisabeth Degryse, who is leading the Les Engagés federal list in Brussels, said on the radio last week that her party had voted against the controversial Asylum and Migration pact. "This is not true," the Ecolo MEP underlines. "Benoît Lutgen voted in favour of all the texts of the pact and abstained on one of the texts. The public can only believe what [politicians] say."
