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European party affiliation of members of the Council

Hi all,

Currently, the "members" section provides pictures of all members of the European Council with information, including their national party and European Parliament political group affiliations. These are useful and needed information. However, it does not include the European party affiliation, which is relevant in its own right, especially since European parties are getting are increasingly big role in coordinating positions on the European Council (see research by the European Parliament Research Service ). I would therefore like to add this information in the table but, before I do so, wanted to get some feedback from the community.

Thanks! Julius Schwarz (talk) 06:56, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there is a tendency here on Wikipedia to use the political groups of the European Parliament instead of European political parties for labelling members of the European Council and the European Commission. This despite the fact that the political groups formally speaking only exist within the organization of the European Parliament. --Nablicus (talk) 07:10, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Nablicus, you are right and I do think this is unfortunate, given the extra-parliamentary role of parties and intra-parliamentary role of poitical groups. But, admittedly, it is not just on Wikipedia -- as most media do the same -- and, since parliamentary groups currently have more visibility than European parties, there is value in displaying the political group affiliation of national leaders. This being said, I don't think it's either/or, and I think European party affiliation can be added alongside the information already present. Would you support that? Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:15, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I totally support that. --Nablicus (talk) 07:37, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I hope we can gather more supportive feedback. The same reasoning would actually apply to the college of commissioners, as you point out. Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Positions in the European Council are actually more often coordinated among members of the same political group than the same European party. That’s partly because almost all members that belong to the same group also belong to the same party. Every member of S&D, for example, also belongs to PES. The only exceptions are Macron and Golob, whose parties belong to Renew, but not ALDE. And since Renew was formed in 2019, it has progressively taken over ALDE’s role in the European Council. As we discussed here, liberal leaders usually meet as Renew before Council summits, not as ALDE. It’s been years since members from ALDE last met before a summit without Macron.

So no, the role of political groups isn’t intra-parliamentary, and no, it’s not unfortunate that we use them to label members of the European Council. We do that because that’s how they organize themselves. That’s why we have an official EU source labelling them like that as well. I’m not saying European parties are irrelevant, but as far as discussions in the Council are concerned, they are not really important either.

So I think writing below every member in the table things like (EPP – EPP – PO) or (Renew – Una. – RE), would only bloat the table and confuse readers for no reason. I also think the chart breaking down the number of members by European party isn’t really necessary, but I’m not as opposed to it either. Brainiac242 (talk) 00:33, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

That's not a very strong argument, though. Basically, it's pretty only Renew that switched to having meetings led by the political group instead of the European party and, indeed, the drive behind this is Macron's party not joining ALDE. But for the EPP and PES, even if the members are the same, the gatherings are still led by the European parties. And that goes not just for the European Council, but also for gathering of Ministers. The groups do remain, by and large, intra-parliamentary and Renew is more the exception than the rule. And the reason there is an official EU source for the list of EUCO members by political group and not by European party is simply that the APPF does not have that in its mandate and only publishes the strict minimum that its mandate requires -- it is not some kind of acknowledgement by the administrative services of the European Parliament that the political group have an overriding role in EUCO proceedings.

As for the table, it is admittedly a full table, but I really do not see how adding three letters in one line would automatically make it bloated and bring confusion. That's of course a personal opinion, but this hardly changes anything to the table itself. Julius Schwarz (talk) 06:30, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Formally speaking, the groups are, by construction, entities within the parliament. They have MEPs as members, not political parties. The criteria for creating (and dissolving) a group are laid down by the rules of procedure of the European Parliament, see, e.g., Rule 33 of the rules of procedure. A member of the European Council or the European Commission can never become a member of a political group of the European Parliament, only MEPs can. It's pretty clear. Then of course, indeed, there are (informal) meetings between members of the European Council in configurations that reflect the political groups. But that does NOT mean that the members of the European Council themselves belong to political groups of the European Parliament. --Nablicus (talk) 06:42, 24 June 2024 (UTC)