European Parliament's centre right builds legislative majorities with far right

When the European Parliament approved the return regulation in June 2026, the loudest cheers came from the hard right. MEPs from Alternative für Deutschland, the National Rally and their allies pumped their fists and chanted for mass deportations. The law they celebrated allows EU governments to send asylum seekers to detention centres beyond the Union's borders, placing them beyond the reach of European courts, journalists and public scrutiny. It is the harshest migration legislation the Union has ever adopted.

What made the vote remarkable was not the hard right's enthusiasm. It was the company they kept. The regulation passed because the European People's Party, the Parliament's largest group and the political home of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, chose to build a majority with Giorgia Meloni's European Conservatives and Reformists, Marine Le Pen's Patriots for Europe and the more radical Europe of Sovereign Nations. A majority of Renew Europe MEPs joined them. The centre-left, liberal and green MEPs who usually form the EPP's governing coalition were left on the losing side.

A party with two majorities

Since the 2024 elections, the EPP has operated what amounts to a dual mandate. For institutional control, the Commission presidency, the Parliament presidency, committee chairs, it relies on the traditional centrist coalition of socialists, liberals and greens. For legislative outcomes on migration, climate, corporate accountability and artificial intelligence, it increasingly turns to the right. The numbers bear this out: the EPP has voted with far-right groups more than twenty times since the new Parliament convened. In June alone, a hard-right group provided the decisive margin in one in five final votes.

This arrangement costs the EPP nothing politically. Its centre-left partners continue to supply the votes that keep von der Leyen in the Berlaymont and Roberta Metsola in the Parliament's presidential chair. They do so without attaching conditions. When the socialists, liberals or greens resist EPP proposals, the group simply switches majorities. The firewall that German Christian Democrats invoke at home, the Brandmauer against cooperation with the AfD, does not exist in Brussels.

Migration law as the template

The return regulation illustrates the new dynamic. The text had been negotiated for years under the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, but the final version hardened significantly under pressure from the right. It permits member states to designate third countries as safe for returns, to establish external processing centres, and to suspend asylum procedures at external borders during vaguely defined crisis situations. Legal scholars warn that several provisions conflict with the Geneva Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The catalyst for acceleration was the situation at Ceuta in late July, when tens of thousands of people attempted to reach the Spanish enclave and at least 88 drowned. Rather than triggering a humanitarian response, the deaths prompted a bidding war among national leaders. Meloni introduced border checks on third-country nationals arriving from Spain. Twenty-two governments blamed Madrid for insufficient border control. Manfred Weber, who leads the EPP in Parliament, demanded deportation centres in Africa and immediate implementation of the return regulation.

Beyond the border

The same alignment is reshaping other policy areas. Under the banner of simplification, the Parliament has voted to narrow the scope of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, delay elements of the Green Deal's industrial provisions, and weaken the AI Act's requirements for foundation models. In each case, the EPP provided the bridge between the hard right's deregulatory agenda and the centre's desire to appear business-friendly. The result is a Union that is coercive at its external borders while permissive towards corporate and environmental harm within them.

This is not a hostile takeover. The far right did not need to capture the institutions; it only needed a mainstream partner willing to translate its priorities into law. The EPP has played that role, calculating that its domestic firewalls hold as long as its Brussels behaviour goes unchallenged by the voters who matter in Berlin, Paris and Rome.

Institutional protection racket

The cooperation extends beyond legislation. In July, the EPP joined Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations to block a criminal referral concerning €276,000 in irregular spending by the Patriots group. The money was repaid and the file closed. Days later, Patriots MEPs helped shield the EPP's Matej Tonin from prosecution sought by Slovenian authorities. These are not isolated incidents. They represent a mutual protection pact: the hard right gets legislative influence and institutional legitimacy; the centre right gets a reliable alternative majority and cover for its own members.

The centre's complicity

None of this functions without the Socialists and Democrats, Renew Europe and the Greens. Their votes elect the Commission president. Their votes re-elect the Parliament president. Their votes fill the committee chairs that control the legislative agenda. In return, they receive nothing binding. The EPP offers warm words about European values while governing from the right. Walking away would not automatically defeat the hard-right majority, the numbers may no longer allow it. But it would force the EPP to choose and to own the coalition on which it increasingly relies.

Polling suggests the traditional centrist bloc is, for the first time since the Second World War, projected to fall short of a parliamentary majority. The arithmetic that sustained the grand coalition for decades is breaking. The question is whether the centre-left recognises this before the next institutional crossroads.

January 2027: the first real test

That crossroads arrives in January 2027, when Parliament elects its president. Roberta Metsola, an EPP MEP from Malta, is seeking a third term. Under a 2024 power-sharing agreement, the presidency should rotate to the socialists. The Patriots for Europe have reportedly offered Metsola their votes in exchange for greater institutional recognition, committee chairs, speaking time, procedural privileges. If the socialists, liberals and greens support her without extracting a commitment to end legislative and institutional cooperation with the hard right, they will have ratified the new order.