The European Parliament is increasing the pressure on Viktor Orbán. In the first session of the year, a majority of MEPs in Strasbourg next week are likely to give the green light for Katarina Barley’s (SPD) report on fundamental rights in the EU. For the first time, the Parliament would call on the Council to initiate Article 7 proceedings against Hungary for “serious and persistent breaches of EU values.” This is stated in the report, which Vice-President Barley pushed through with a strong tailwind in the Libe Committee on Civil Liberties (35 votes in favor, six against). The procedure would be the first step towards further tightening the thumbscrews against Orbán: Removal of certain rights of the member state along with voting rights in the Council.
Finnish MEP Petri Sarvamaa from the Christian Democratic EPP Group is now pursuing a very similar mission. He is collecting signatures from his fellow MEPs for his letter to Parliament President Roberta Metsola, which he also posted on the X platform. In the letter, he calls a petition, he denounces the “erosion of the rule of law” in Hungary under Orbán.
The MEP wants Metsola to also call on the Council or Commission to initiate Article 7 proceedings against Hungary. Following Hungary’s attempts to interrupt the decision-making process at the European Council in December, it is high time for the European Parliament to act. Daniel Freund from the Greens, who has been campaigning for a tougher stance against Orbán since he entered the European Parliament five years ago, supports the EPP politician’s signature campaign on Platform X.
It is astonishing that the EPP MEP collects signatures when the Barley report is more far-reaching and binding. He may know nothing about her fundamental rights report. After all, he is a housekeeper and sits on the Agriculture Committee. Or he thinks practically. According to the motto “Better safe than sorry.” The most important is that Parliament votes with one strong voice next week. Have a good day.
Stéphane Séjourné chooses clear words: “The risk of an ungovernable Europe is real,” warned the leader of the liberal Renew Group in the European Parliament on Tuesday. Populists and radical right-wing parties could win enough seats in the European elections in June to prevent a viable alliance of pro-European forces. The continuation of the so-called Von der Leyen coalition of the EPP, Social Democrats and Liberals, which he is striving for, is not secure, he warned.
Séjourné’s Renew group could itself be one of the big losers of a possible shift to the right. Six months before the European elections, EU-wide polls predict that the Liberals could lose ten to 20 of their current 101 seats. It is possible that both the far-right ID group and the national conservative ECR could overtake the third-largest group in the Strasbourg parliament.
However, the European election campaign has not even begun. To prepare the party family for the coming months and a decidedly pro-European line, Séjourné invited the leading candidates from several member states to a major event in Brussels on Tuesday. However, the election manifesto and the line-up for the top jobs at the EU level are not expected to be decided until a week before Easter, when the ALDE, the larger of the two liberal party families, invites its members to a congress in Brussels.
Séjourné advocates a self-confident approach: The Liberals should put forward their own candidates for the three most important posts, the heads of the EU Commission, European Council and European Parliament, he says. Personalities with the necessary stature exist, he says.
Among the Liberals, Estonian head of government Kaja Kallas, Luxembourg’s former Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and outgoing Council President Charles Michel are among those considered to be interested. Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, who was still the star of the top team for the European elections in 2019, will probably no longer play a significant role, says a well-informed liberal.
Michel announced his candidacy for the European Parliament at the weekend, bringing the personnel poker into motion. However, the former Belgian prime minister can probably not count on too much sympathy in his own camp should he once again position himself for one of the top jobs. However, his announcement increases the pressure on Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to comment on a possible second term of office.
The environment for the Liberals is anything but easy: the member parties are weakening in many countries, not just in Germany. In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National is clearly overshadowing President Emmanuel Macron’s party in European election polls. It remains to be seen whether the appointment of Séjourné’s partner Gabriel Attal as the new prime minister will bring new momentum to the Macron camp. In Spain, the Ciudadanos party, which currently still has six MPs, has collapsed. In the Netherlands and the northern European member states, the liberal parties are also not doing particularly well at the moment.
However, Séjourné is combative. He points to the success of the Polska 2050 party, for example, which is part of the new Polish government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Liberal forces are also gaining strength in Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. Séjourné says he is optimistic he will win enough seats to continue to play the role of “kingmaker” alongside the EPP and S&D.
However, the Liberals also need success in the populous member states to achieve this. The FDP is relying on the pulling power of its candidate Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who is attracting a lot of attention with her pointed positions. During her appearance in Brussels, Strack-Zimmermann lashed out at Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his blockade of support for Ukraine.
In Italy, on the other hand, Renew is currently almost empty-handed with just two MPs. Former Italian European Secretary of State Sandro Gozi is urging the three liberal parties in Rome to agree on an electoral list. “Many voters want a joint list, but it’s a question of personalities,” he told Table.Media. An alliance between former prime minister Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva and the other two parties could win eight to nine seats, believes the MEP, who sits in the European Parliament for Macron’s Renaissance list.
Séjourné also wants to poach in the Christian Democratic party family, especially if EPP leader Manfred Weber intensifies cooperation with the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group after the election. He believes this could persuade some delegations in the EPP group to join Renew.
For his group, Séjourné rules out formalized cooperation in a tripartite alliance with the EPP and the ECR, “even if we had a majority.” To be considered as a partner, the group around Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia would first have to “put its house in order,” i.e. kick out particularly problematic members. Just how compatible the ECR is will become clear in the upcoming vote on the asylum and migration pact in a few weeks.
Séjourné does not want to tolerate cooperation with extremists in his own camp either. If Mark Rutte’s liberal VVD forms a government in the Netherlands with the election winner Geert Wilders, the parliamentary group leader would have to draw the necessary conclusions. However, the latest signals from the VVD do not indicate that there will be any cooperation in the foreseeable future, according to the Renew Group.
It is a political rise of meteoric dimensions the likes of which France has rarely seen: At the age of 34, Gabriel Attal was appointed the country’s youngest prime minister on Tuesday. He succeeds Élisabeth Borne, who handed in her resignation on Monday. The loyal member of President Macron’s entourage was only appointed Minister of Education in July last year. Since then, he has become one of the most popular ministers in France.
It is this popularity that explains the French president’s choice: By appointing him, Emmanuel Macron has opted for a political figure capable of relaunching his term of office, which has lost momentum following the adoption of highly controversial laws on pension reform and immigration. This profile contrasts with the profiles of his predecessors Élisabeth Borne and Jean Castex, who were perceived as rather technocratic in Paris.
For Sandro Gozi, a Member of the European Parliament, who is on the list of Renaissance, the French branch of Renew, this nomination will give Renaissance a “political boost” in the next European elections. “There will be an Attal effect,” he predicted in an interview with Table Media.
Attal is tasked with proposing the formation of a government to the President of the Republic, which is expected to happen by the end of this week. As the composition of the new government has not yet been determined, it is “too early” to say how the new French government will affect Europe, Stéphane Séjourné, head of the Renew Group in the European Parliament and Attal’s partner in civil life, told the European press in Brussels yesterday, Tuesday. “What is clear, however, is that I will ask the political leaders of our group to participate as much as possible in our campaign,” he added.
The 34-year-old Attal began his political career in 2012, when the Parisian became a parliamentary advisor in the cabinet of Marisol Touraine, the then Socialist Minister for Social Affairs and Health, in his early 20s. In this position, which he held until 2017, he was mainly responsible for writing her speeches. Gabriel Attal then worked as a consultant. At the same time, he was a councilor in Vanves, a town near Paris. He was re-elected there in 2020.
Attal was originally a member of the Socialist Party (PS) but left the PS in 2016 and joined the En Marche movement (LREM) when it was founded. In June 2017, he was elected deputy for LREM in the Hauts-de-Seine department (next to Paris). He was a member of the National Assembly’s Culture and Education Committee.
In January 2018, he became spokesperson for LREM until he was appointed Secretary of State for Youth on October 16, 2018. In July 2020, the aspiring politician was appointed Secretary of State to the then Prime Minister Jean Castex and Government Spokesman. In 2021, he was appointed to the Executive Office of the LREM.
After Emmanuel Macron was elected for a second term in May 2022, he was appointed Minister Delegate for Public Finance in Élisabeth Borne’s government. In July 2023, he became the youngest Minister of Education and Youth. During his term of office, he took measures against the wearing of the abaya, stepped up the fight against bullying and announced a “knowledge shock” (“Un choc des savoirs”) to strengthen the mastery of mathematics and French, as well as to raise the overall level of students.
Lucía Caudet likes to set the pace. The passionate drummer works as Deputy Head of Cabinet for EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton. With a team of 17, she organizes his XXL range of topics. Currently at the top of her agenda: reminding the large digital platforms of their new obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA). When she shows her children photos of tech company bosses, they are suddenly very interested in her work.
The example of the regulation of Instagram and other platforms makes the Commission’s work understandable to many. Caudet was born in 1976 to German-Spanish parents in Los Angeles – just a few hours’ drive from Silicon Valley. When she was four years old, her family moved to the south of France. She later went to a German school in Madrid. She thus has a special approach to languages. “I’m lucky that I can communicate with people from different cultures.”
After school, she actually wanted to become a journalist. She studied law and EU law to gain a broad foundation. Her first job took her straight to the heart of the EU: from 2000, she worked for the Union of European Federalists, which fought for a European constitution. In the years that followed, she worked as a spokesperson for the insurance association Insurance Europe, where she was responsible for communicating risks, and for the PR company GPlus Europe, where she dealt with financial issues.
She did not see herself as a lobbyist: “I was mainly paid to explain Brussels.” With Jean-Claude Juncker’s Commission, explaining Brussels also became her official mission. As a member of the spokesperson team, Caudet explained the policies of the EU Commission. “Since you formulate the positions yourself, you also make policy to a certain extent through communication,” reports Caudet. It is therefore not the case that Commission spokespersons only read out speech notes.
In 2019, she moved even closer to politics. Breton became the Internal Market Commissioner and thus responsible for industrial policy. The Frenchman, who previously held CEO positions in industry, brought Caudet into his team as deputy head of cabinet. “We are always discussing,” says Caudet about her relationship with Breton. “He always has an open door.” Communication is still an essential part of her job. In recent weeks, she and her team have sent letters to X, Meta, AliExpress, TikTok, YouTube, Snap and Amazon. How are they coping with the DSA rules that came into force in August?
“We’re seeing a lot of progress,” says Caudet, taking stock. “But that doesn’t mean they are sufficient.” From February, “smaller” platforms with less than 45 million users will also have to comply with the obligations. Caudet is also active on social media. She comments on media reports in which ex-Open AI boss Sam Altman calls for more regulation for artificial intelligence with a meme: “Mount up!” it says. Paul Meerkamp
The European Parliament is increasing the pressure on Viktor Orbán. In the first session of the year, a majority of MEPs in Strasbourg next week are likely to give the green light for Katarina Barley’s (SPD) report on fundamental rights in the EU. For the first time, the Parliament would call on the Council to initiate Article 7 proceedings against Hungary for “serious and persistent breaches of EU values.” This is stated in the report, which Vice-President Barley pushed through with a strong tailwind in the Libe Committee on Civil Liberties (35 votes in favor, six against). The procedure would be the first step towards further tightening the thumbscrews against Orbán: Removal of certain rights of the member state along with voting rights in the Council.
Finnish MEP Petri Sarvamaa from the Christian Democratic EPP Group is now pursuing a very similar mission. He is collecting signatures from his fellow MEPs for his letter to Parliament President Roberta Metsola, which he also posted on the X platform. In the letter, he calls a petition, he denounces the “erosion of the rule of law” in Hungary under Orbán.
The MEP wants Metsola to also call on the Council or Commission to initiate Article 7 proceedings against Hungary. Following Hungary’s attempts to interrupt the decision-making process at the European Council in December, it is high time for the European Parliament to act. Daniel Freund from the Greens, who has been campaigning for a tougher stance against Orbán since he entered the European Parliament five years ago, supports the EPP politician’s signature campaign on Platform X.
It is astonishing that the EPP MEP collects signatures when the Barley report is more far-reaching and binding. He may know nothing about her fundamental rights report. After all, he is a housekeeper and sits on the Agriculture Committee. Or he thinks practically. According to the motto “Better safe than sorry.” The most important is that Parliament votes with one strong voice next week. Have a good day.
Stéphane Séjourné chooses clear words: “The risk of an ungovernable Europe is real,” warned the leader of the liberal Renew Group in the European Parliament on Tuesday. Populists and radical right-wing parties could win enough seats in the European elections in June to prevent a viable alliance of pro-European forces. The continuation of the so-called Von der Leyen coalition of the EPP, Social Democrats and Liberals, which he is striving for, is not secure, he warned.
Séjourné’s Renew group could itself be one of the big losers of a possible shift to the right. Six months before the European elections, EU-wide polls predict that the Liberals could lose ten to 20 of their current 101 seats. It is possible that both the far-right ID group and the national conservative ECR could overtake the third-largest group in the Strasbourg parliament.
However, the European election campaign has not even begun. To prepare the party family for the coming months and a decidedly pro-European line, Séjourné invited the leading candidates from several member states to a major event in Brussels on Tuesday. However, the election manifesto and the line-up for the top jobs at the EU level are not expected to be decided until a week before Easter, when the ALDE, the larger of the two liberal party families, invites its members to a congress in Brussels.
Séjourné advocates a self-confident approach: The Liberals should put forward their own candidates for the three most important posts, the heads of the EU Commission, European Council and European Parliament, he says. Personalities with the necessary stature exist, he says.
Among the Liberals, Estonian head of government Kaja Kallas, Luxembourg’s former Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and outgoing Council President Charles Michel are among those considered to be interested. Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, who was still the star of the top team for the European elections in 2019, will probably no longer play a significant role, says a well-informed liberal.
Michel announced his candidacy for the European Parliament at the weekend, bringing the personnel poker into motion. However, the former Belgian prime minister can probably not count on too much sympathy in his own camp should he once again position himself for one of the top jobs. However, his announcement increases the pressure on Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to comment on a possible second term of office.
The environment for the Liberals is anything but easy: the member parties are weakening in many countries, not just in Germany. In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National is clearly overshadowing President Emmanuel Macron’s party in European election polls. It remains to be seen whether the appointment of Séjourné’s partner Gabriel Attal as the new prime minister will bring new momentum to the Macron camp. In Spain, the Ciudadanos party, which currently still has six MPs, has collapsed. In the Netherlands and the northern European member states, the liberal parties are also not doing particularly well at the moment.
However, Séjourné is combative. He points to the success of the Polska 2050 party, for example, which is part of the new Polish government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Liberal forces are also gaining strength in Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. Séjourné says he is optimistic he will win enough seats to continue to play the role of “kingmaker” alongside the EPP and S&D.
However, the Liberals also need success in the populous member states to achieve this. The FDP is relying on the pulling power of its candidate Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who is attracting a lot of attention with her pointed positions. During her appearance in Brussels, Strack-Zimmermann lashed out at Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his blockade of support for Ukraine.
In Italy, on the other hand, Renew is currently almost empty-handed with just two MPs. Former Italian European Secretary of State Sandro Gozi is urging the three liberal parties in Rome to agree on an electoral list. “Many voters want a joint list, but it’s a question of personalities,” he told Table.Media. An alliance between former prime minister Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva and the other two parties could win eight to nine seats, believes the MEP, who sits in the European Parliament for Macron’s Renaissance list.
Séjourné also wants to poach in the Christian Democratic party family, especially if EPP leader Manfred Weber intensifies cooperation with the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group after the election. He believes this could persuade some delegations in the EPP group to join Renew.
For his group, Séjourné rules out formalized cooperation in a tripartite alliance with the EPP and the ECR, “even if we had a majority.” To be considered as a partner, the group around Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia would first have to “put its house in order,” i.e. kick out particularly problematic members. Just how compatible the ECR is will become clear in the upcoming vote on the asylum and migration pact in a few weeks.
Séjourné does not want to tolerate cooperation with extremists in his own camp either. If Mark Rutte’s liberal VVD forms a government in the Netherlands with the election winner Geert Wilders, the parliamentary group leader would have to draw the necessary conclusions. However, the latest signals from the VVD do not indicate that there will be any cooperation in the foreseeable future, according to the Renew Group.
It is a political rise of meteoric dimensions the likes of which France has rarely seen: At the age of 34, Gabriel Attal was appointed the country’s youngest prime minister on Tuesday. He succeeds Élisabeth Borne, who handed in her resignation on Monday. The loyal member of President Macron’s entourage was only appointed Minister of Education in July last year. Since then, he has become one of the most popular ministers in France.
It is this popularity that explains the French president’s choice: By appointing him, Emmanuel Macron has opted for a political figure capable of relaunching his term of office, which has lost momentum following the adoption of highly controversial laws on pension reform and immigration. This profile contrasts with the profiles of his predecessors Élisabeth Borne and Jean Castex, who were perceived as rather technocratic in Paris.
For Sandro Gozi, a Member of the European Parliament, who is on the list of Renaissance, the French branch of Renew, this nomination will give Renaissance a “political boost” in the next European elections. “There will be an Attal effect,” he predicted in an interview with Table Media.
Attal is tasked with proposing the formation of a government to the President of the Republic, which is expected to happen by the end of this week. As the composition of the new government has not yet been determined, it is “too early” to say how the new French government will affect Europe, Stéphane Séjourné, head of the Renew Group in the European Parliament and Attal’s partner in civil life, told the European press in Brussels yesterday, Tuesday. “What is clear, however, is that I will ask the political leaders of our group to participate as much as possible in our campaign,” he added.
The 34-year-old Attal began his political career in 2012, when the Parisian became a parliamentary advisor in the cabinet of Marisol Touraine, the then Socialist Minister for Social Affairs and Health, in his early 20s. In this position, which he held until 2017, he was mainly responsible for writing her speeches. Gabriel Attal then worked as a consultant. At the same time, he was a councilor in Vanves, a town near Paris. He was re-elected there in 2020.
Attal was originally a member of the Socialist Party (PS) but left the PS in 2016 and joined the En Marche movement (LREM) when it was founded. In June 2017, he was elected deputy for LREM in the Hauts-de-Seine department (next to Paris). He was a member of the National Assembly’s Culture and Education Committee.
In January 2018, he became spokesperson for LREM until he was appointed Secretary of State for Youth on October 16, 2018. In July 2020, the aspiring politician was appointed Secretary of State to the then Prime Minister Jean Castex and Government Spokesman. In 2021, he was appointed to the Executive Office of the LREM.
After Emmanuel Macron was elected for a second term in May 2022, he was appointed Minister Delegate for Public Finance in Élisabeth Borne’s government. In July 2023, he became the youngest Minister of Education and Youth. During his term of office, he took measures against the wearing of the abaya, stepped up the fight against bullying and announced a “knowledge shock” (“Un choc des savoirs”) to strengthen the mastery of mathematics and French, as well as to raise the overall level of students.
Lucía Caudet likes to set the pace. The passionate drummer works as Deputy Head of Cabinet for EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton. With a team of 17, she organizes his XXL range of topics. Currently at the top of her agenda: reminding the large digital platforms of their new obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA). When she shows her children photos of tech company bosses, they are suddenly very interested in her work.
The example of the regulation of Instagram and other platforms makes the Commission’s work understandable to many. Caudet was born in 1976 to German-Spanish parents in Los Angeles – just a few hours’ drive from Silicon Valley. When she was four years old, her family moved to the south of France. She later went to a German school in Madrid. She thus has a special approach to languages. “I’m lucky that I can communicate with people from different cultures.”
After school, she actually wanted to become a journalist. She studied law and EU law to gain a broad foundation. Her first job took her straight to the heart of the EU: from 2000, she worked for the Union of European Federalists, which fought for a European constitution. In the years that followed, she worked as a spokesperson for the insurance association Insurance Europe, where she was responsible for communicating risks, and for the PR company GPlus Europe, where she dealt with financial issues.
She did not see herself as a lobbyist: “I was mainly paid to explain Brussels.” With Jean-Claude Juncker’s Commission, explaining Brussels also became her official mission. As a member of the spokesperson team, Caudet explained the policies of the EU Commission. “Since you formulate the positions yourself, you also make policy to a certain extent through communication,” reports Caudet. It is therefore not the case that Commission spokespersons only read out speech notes.
In 2019, she moved even closer to politics. Breton became the Internal Market Commissioner and thus responsible for industrial policy. The Frenchman, who previously held CEO positions in industry, brought Caudet into his team as deputy head of cabinet. “We are always discussing,” says Caudet about her relationship with Breton. “He always has an open door.” Communication is still an essential part of her job. In recent weeks, she and her team have sent letters to X, Meta, AliExpress, TikTok, YouTube, Snap and Amazon. How are they coping with the DSA rules that came into force in August?
“We’re seeing a lot of progress,” says Caudet, taking stock. “But that doesn’t mean they are sufficient.” From February, “smaller” platforms with less than 45 million users will also have to comply with the obligations. Caudet is also active on social media. She comments on media reports in which ex-Open AI boss Sam Altman calls for more regulation for artificial intelligence with a meme: “Mount up!” it says. Paul Meerkamp
