Why does the European Right accommodate backsliding states? An analysis of 24 European People’s Party votes (2011–2019)

Abstract

Over the last decade, the EU’s fundamental values have been under threat at the national level, in particular among several Central and Eastern European states that joined the EU since 2004. During this time, the European People’s Party (EPP) has been criticized for its unwillingness to vote for measures that would sanction the Hungarian Fidesz government, one of its members, in breach of key democratic principles since 2010. In this paper, we seek to understand how cohesive the EPP group has been on fundamental values-related votes, how the position of EPP MEPs on these issues has evolved over time, and what explains intra-EPP disagreement on whether to accommodate fundamental values violators within the EU. To address these questions, we analyse the votes of EPP MEPs across 24 resolutions on the protection of EU fundamental values between 2011 and 2019. Our findings reveal below-average EPP cohesion on these votes, and a sharp increase in the tendency of EPP MEPs to support these resolutions over time. A number of factors explain the disagreements we find. While the EPP’s desire to maintain Fidesz within its ranks is central, this explanation does not offer a comprehensive account of the group’s accommodative behaviour. In particular, we find that ideological factors as well as the strategic interests of national governments at the EU level are central to understanding the positions of EPP MEPs, as well as the evolution of these positions over time. These results further our understanding of the nature of the obstacles to EU sanctions in fundamental values abuse cases, and the role of partisanship in fuelling EU inaction especially.

Democratic backsliding as a catalyst for polity-based contestation? Populist radical right cooperation in the European Parliament

“…Note 1. MEPs' voting behaviour on democratic backsliding resolutions has received more attention recently, but the focus has been either a small number of votes (Meijers & van der Veer, 2019a) or a single EPG (Herman et al, 2021).…”

Anchoring or Undermining Democracy: The European People's Party and Democratic Backsliding in Serbia

“…As Kelemen (2017) noted, Europarties have a strong incentive to protect autocrats who deliver votes at the EU level. As a result, EPP MEPs were ‘significantly more likely to vote against a resolution if it targets an EPP member’ (Herman et al 2021, p. 181). Parties outside the EU that eroded democratic standards have also been coddled by their transnational partners seeking to extend influence abroad (Fonck 2018).…”

“…It has been claimed that strategic considerations – a resolve to maintain Fidesz's seats within its ranks – dominantly determined the EPP's responses to the unprecedented decline of democracy in Hungary (Kelemen 2020). Ideological convictions also proved to have shaped the actions of some EPP Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), with those espousing authoritarian and traditionalist worldviews being more likely to adopt an accommodative stance on this matter (Herman et al 2021; Sedelmeier 2014).…”

The Far-Right Threat in the United States: A European Perspective

“…Leaders of the European People's Party (EPP), the largest political group in the European Parliament of which his Fidesz party was a member, often lovingly described Orbán as "the black sheep" of the group. Confronted with growing criticism of EPP membership of Fidesz, both from inside and outside of the group, Orbán defenders would claim that it was better to keep him inside, so that he would moderate, than kick him out and have him radicalize (Herman, Hoerner, and Lacey 2021). In reality, Fidesz remained in the group, radicalized anyway, and Orbán used the EPP protection to destroy liberal democracy in Hungary.…”