Trading values for seats? The intra-party debate on Fidesz’s inclusion or exclusion in the European People’s Party Group

Abstract

Presenter: Sonja Priebus Abstract: In March 2021, the Hungarian Fidesz party’s delegation left the European Peoples’ Party’s (EPP) group in the European Parliament and thus pre-empted its expulsion, which became imminent with an amendment to the group’s Rules of Procedure. The amendment was adopted after the EPP group had shielded Fidesz – which had driven a process of democratic backsliding at the national level since 2010 – for more than a decade. Yet the strategy of keeping Fidesz in the group had not been uncontested, with an increasing number of members pushing for its expulsion. The paper asks two questions. First, how was this issue negotiated within the EPP? And second, how did those EPP members in favour of exclusion manage to push through the amendment to the group’s Rules of Procedure? Theoretically, the paper draws on the comparative politics literature on the responses of national mainstream parties to Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs). This literature distinguishes between two basic strategies of mainstream parties: they can either include PRRPs in the political process or exclude them. Applied to the EU level, the EPP was faced with a similar choice: shield Fidesz or expulse it. I posit that these two strategies stand for two conflicting goals: seat-maximization on the one hand (inclusion) and protection of EU values (exclusion) on the other. I argue that for long, the EPP was willing to trade values for seats and that exclusion became a feasible option only when the costs of inclusion became too high.