European People’s Party prepares 2029 election strategy amid internal split over far-right cooperation

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.

“The main polarization across the continent in many national elections, and certainly in the European election 2029 … will be the anti-European populists against the EPP parties,” said EPP vice-chair and Romanian prime minister nominee Siegfried Mureșan.

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. “Because they are not in government, they can promise the earth. 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.

“This is the political history, the historical dilemma EPP needs to decide — it needs to be clear and it needs be truthful for the voters, are we center right or are we another right-wing party?” said Finnish EPP lawmaker Sirpa Pietikäinen.

To deal or not to deal

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.

“There has always been that discussion within the party: Whether we should put content first, or the centrist platform first,” said Finnish EPP delegation chief Mika Aaltola.

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.

That happened recently on the EU’s long-term budget file, when a right-wing majority voted to strip green and gender criteria from spending oversight. EPP leaders had vowed to stick with the center but could not keep lawmakers in line, exposing a divide now spilling into day-to-day legislative battles.

At its last plenary, the EPP group discussed how to pass a resolution on the migration crisis in Ceuta, the Spanish territory, after negotiations with the Socialists and Democrats collapsed. Two sets of internal notes seen by POLITICO show the strategy was to make the Patriots feel “included” by deliberately backing one of their amendments.

The idea came from the Spanish delegation, which wanted a political win in Madrid. EPP leaders backed the plan, urging lawmakers to support the text whether or not the Patriots’ amendments passed.

Migration tensions

The EPP’s bigger challenge may be not whether to work with the far right, but whether to fight it on its issues or shift the political agenda onto its own terrain — and, in doing so, whether to move right to win back voters or stand their ground in the center.

At the congress following the 2024 EU election, Weber made clear that he wanted to reshape the party’s “narrative” to regain support from voters tempted by far-right populists. That meant tougher migration policies, more deportations and rolling back green rules — positions that have only hardened since.

Even as the EU’s Migration Pact introduced faster asylum and border procedures in June, and negotiators agreed on bloc-wide rules to speed up deportations, the EPP pushed for tougher measures.

At its Vienna political assembly that month, it called for more investment in Frontex, the EU’s coast guard agency, and easier returns at the bloc’s external border. Delegates also agreed to replace “irregular migration” with “illegal migration” throughout the text, adopting language more commonly associated with the far right, according to the confidential minutes.

That migration strategy is raising eyebrows within the party.

During a heated debate on political Islam in Europe in the same assembly, EPP Vice President and former Commissioner Mairead McGuinness warned colleagues “against conflating religious faith with political extremism,” calling for “a clear commitment to freedom of religion,” the minutes read.

German EPP lawmaker Dennis Radtke, who leads the party’s wing in charge of relations with trade unions, told POLITICO the party should avoid blaming the far right’s rise on migration alone.

“Of course we have to ensure secure borders, no doubt about that, but to link the success of the extreme right in Europe only with the question of migration … I have doubts that this is the case,” he said. “The asylum seeker numbers are going down; the extreme right is still going up because a lot of social problems are not solved or even touched.”

Culture wars

As competitiveness and deregulation dominate the EPP’s response to Europe’s economic woes, some fear social and workers’ rights are being sidelined.

In February, the party’s workers’, seniors’ and women’s wings pushed a resolution calling for stronger social protections, skills and youth employment support. Austrian, Finnish, German and Swedish delegates came out against it, accusing it of being “poorly framed”, as “its focus on social justice sends the wrong signal given EPP priorities on competitiveness and productivity,” according to meeting minutes.

Other lawmakers pushed back, arguing the party could not abandon the social dimension. The leadership postponed the vote, and the resolution quietly disappeared from the next meeting’s agenda.

“It has not become easier,” said Radtke of trying to strengthen the EPP’s social focus. “If we are not willing to deliver on workers’ rights, on social issues, then we cannot claim to be Europe’s last people’s party.”

The far right’s culture wars are also reverberating inside the EPP, where longstanding tensions over feminism, gender and reproductive rights are shifting in favor of the conservative camp.

In Parliament, the EPP has traditionally backed strong sexual and reproductive rights while allowing national delegations a free vote on abortion, said veteran gender equality MEP Pietikäinen. Now, as some delegations harden their positions, consensus is eroding and more issues — including gender budgeting, which examines how public spending affects women and men — are left to free votes. “Now it has been more difficult,” she said.

A report on gender inequalities in health descended into pandemonium at an EPP group meeting last plenary, as Irish, Polish and Luxembourgish lawmakers urged colleagues to back it, while Spaniards called it “crazy” and Croatians denounced its “gender ideology” as “radical” and “extreme.”