Radical right parties within the European Parliament. The case of the Patriots for Europe and the Europe of Sovereign Nations.

The 10th parliamentary term of the European Parliament (EP) represents a significant shift in the balance of power of EU parliamentary politics owing to the increasing strength of radical right parties within the EP. Their increased relevance is an interesting topic for at least two distinct yet interrelated reasons. The first pertains to the organisations of these parties, which are separated into (at least) two groups, namely the Patriots for Europe (PfE) and the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), that together account for a total of 101 MEPs. The second reason concerns the potential impact that these groups may wield over the legislative work of the EP by offering a (possible) alternative parliamentary majority in cases of voting alignment with the Popular and Conservative groups. Despite their potential impact on EU politics, our understanding of these new party groups remains relatively limited. While it is clear that the inability to establish a single cohesive right-wing and Eurosceptic group confirms a certain variability among the radical right parties’ orientations and the persisting difficulties in establishing solid political coordination, it is nevertheless crucial to evaluate whether voting behaviour congruence has emerged during the first year of the 10th parliamentary term. Furthermore, it is fundamental to investigate if, in addition to the potential voting alignment between the two groups, patterns of convergence with the EPP and the ECR have effectively emerged. The potential for political congruence, the policy areas in which it could have occurred, and the level of effectiveness of this political proximity are all factors that can determine the trajectory of legislative politics within the EP by assessing whether we are confronting the end of the cordon sanitaire as a lintel of EU party politics. This outcome would illustrate the deficiencies of the centrist and consensual strategy in European legislative politics, especially considering the unstable political majority within the EP. To conduct this initial exploratory research, the political and ideological agendas of the groups will be delineated to identify areas of convergence and divergence among the parties. Then, the paper will analyse the voting behaviour of the two European Party groups in the period July 2024–February 2026 on all the available roll call votes in order to evaluate: a) the degree of the groups’ internal cohesion, b) the degree of voting convergence between the two groups, c) the degree of convergence between the two groups on one side and the EPP and the ECR on the other, and d) how many times the two groups have been part of a right-wing winning majority. Finally, after determining whether the groups have engaged in a collaborative effort within EP, the paper will evaluate the most sensitive policy areas where cooperation occurred, assessing whether this voting convergence has proven effective in policy domains aligned with the ideological positions of right-wing groups (such as individual rights, migratory policy, etc.) or if this (eventual) cooperation has involved other policy sectors, thus detecting a significant “contagion effect” within the EP.