EPP-ED group changes voting rules to avoid split

The centre-right EPP-ED group in the European Parliament has been forced to change its rules of procedure to avoid damaging splits over who should lead the group until 2009.

The 264-member group, the biggest in Parliament, was set to vote yesterday (6 December) to change its internal rules to decide a new president to replace Hans-Gert Pöttering if he is elected as Parliament president in January. In future there will be three rounds of elections for a new president with one candidate being knocked out with each voting round. This is designed to ensure that the winner from the four or more MEPs standing emerges with clear support from a majority of the group.

"This reflects the divergences of views on the future of Europe and economic factors," said one EPP-ED source.

French UMP member Joseph Daul, currently president of the agriculture committee, is still the frontrunner by a significant margin, according to EPP-ED sources. "The hot money is on Daul," said one group insider. But he added that the fact that Daul spoke German but next to no English would count against him in an increasingly linguistically diverse Parliament where English was becoming more and more commonly used.

As a farmer, Daul is a strong supporter of the Common Agricultural Policy and a defender of keeping the Parliament in Strasbourg. But this makes him unpopular with some EPP-ED members, especially UK Conservatives who believe having Daul running the group would make it more difficult to convince UK Conservative leader David Cameron to keep his 27 MEPs in the EPP-ED. Cameron is trying to re-position the Conservative party closer to the political centre but needs to convince his members that the EU can be a force for economic modernisation. He has delayed a decision on whether to stay in the group until the end of the current legislature.

Swedish Moderate Party MEP Gunnar Hökmark is winning support, especially among UK Conservative MEPs with whom he shares a common outlook on economic issues. "They like Gunnar’s approach," said one EPP-ED insider. He could also get backing from deputies from the new member states who are concerned about the group’s increasing hostile attitude to further enlargement.

The two other candidates are Austrian Ottmar Karas and Italian Antonio Tajani. Spaniard Jaime Mayor Oreja is also planning to stand.

This is the first time that the leadership of the EPP-ED has been contested. The group’s previous presidents, Pöttering and former Belgian prime ministers Wilfried Martens and Leo Tindemans, were elected unopposed.

Pöttering is expected to be elected Parliament president on 16 January next year. Under a deal struck with the Socialists in 2004, the EPP-ED will have the presidency of Parliament until 2009, following Spanish Socialist MEP Josep Borrell whose term of office ends in January.

• Monica Frassoni, co-president of the Greens/ European Free Alliance groups of MEPs, was due to announce today (7 December) that she would stand as a candidate for president of Parliament against Hans-Gert Pöttering. As European Voice went to press, Parliament sources said it was unlikely that the Fair Chair campaign group of MEPs would back Frassoni because one of her campaign issues was restarting negotiations on the EU constitution. This is anathema to the largely Eurosceptic Fair Chair MEPs. Danish Jens-Peter Bonde, Independence and Democracy group co-leader and spokesman of the Fair Chair group, is expected to stand against Pöttering as is French MEP Francis Wurtz, leader of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left.

The centre-right EPP-ED group in the European Parliament has been forced to change its rules of procedure to avoid damaging splits over who should lead the group until 2009.