Von der Leyen’s red tape slasher pushed to go ‘public’ on far-right alliance

The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) must move to the right to obtain support in slashing supply chain red tape, said an MEP from the far-right Patriots for Europe party, Anders Vistisen, after the EPP rejected a proposed deal from the center-left. 

Jörgen Warborn, an EPP lawmaker from Sweden, has been tasked with reducing supply chain rules, and despite starting in January, he still has little to show for it. In late October, several socialist MEPs rejected his proposal to relax specific reporting requirements for firms.

With his red tape-cutting chops in question, he then spurned a follow-up proposal from lead socialist René Repasi on Tuesday. Repasi offered to support exemptions for firms with fewer than 3,000 employees in exchange for slashing civil liability rules, a compromise text and emails seen by Euractiv show. 

According to Green lawmaker Kira Peter-Hansen, the EPP closed the door to any further discussions.

“We’ve proposed several ways for the four pro-European parties to find an agreement. Unfortunately, the EPP prefers to sit in a corner and sulk, instead of being part of a solution,” she said. 

That leaves Warborn at the mercy of far-right lawmakers, who are keen to seize their chance to lock in a more permanent alliance. 

“The real majority for deregulation is on the right wing of the parliament,” said Vistisen, who is the whip for his party’s 85 MEPs. 

He is demanding that the EPP limit supply chain rules to the most prominent firms, like Denmark’s 20 most traded, slash the number of details companies must provide, and go “public” with the far-right.

“We said to the EPP that if they strike a deal with us, it needs to be a public deal,” he said. “It can’t just be that they continue to rely on the votes we provide without acknowledging that we influence drafting the legislation.”

Going public with the far right, however, would represent a coup de grâce for the centrist parliamentary majority backing European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

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Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled the name of Patriots for Europe MEP Anders Vistisen.