How to make a “spring of enlargement” a success

By Julian Plottka and Funda Tekin

In Germany, Euroscepticism has not undermined the government’s support for enlargement. But the window of opportunity opened in 2022 might be closing soon.

In September 2026, Marta Kos announced the “autumn of enlargement”. Still, as we have learned yet again, enlargement is anything but an easy sell.

The publication of the pre-enlargement policy reviews (6 October 2026), the European Council meeting (15 October 2026), the enlargement package (4 November 2026) and the EU Enlargement Forum (15/16 November 2026) mark important milestones in the EU’s enlargement policy. However, as it now stands, none of these events will move EU accession a substantive step forward. The major challenge for enlargement policy is once again the lack of political will among national governments.

Four challenges of EU enlargement …

The EU needs to find an answer to four challenges to achieve progress in the enlargement process:

• First, the challenge of speed relates to the geopolitical and modernisation logic that drive this policy. While containment of Russian expansionism and the protection of European values require fast accession, the modernisation logic’s merit-based approach is a lengthy procedure as it allows progress only when candidate countries reform.
• The second challenge results from the enlargement policy’s credibility. During their 20 years at the EU’s doorstep, citizens in the Western Balkans have lost trust in the credibility of their accession perspective. Both bilateral conflicts with member states and concerns that Moldova’s and Ukraine’s accession to the EU might get fast-tracked have amplified this perception.
• The EU’s absorption capacity is the third challenge. The Union’s last reform was drafted more than 23 years ago in a fundamentally different world. In spite of numerous reform proposals such as the report of the Franco-German Expert Group, appetite for reforming the EU is low among EU member states.
• Finally, there is the fourth challenge of a fading political momentum for enlargement as the EU is facing a series of major national elections in 2027. As war fatigue grows and radically Eurosceptic extremist parties gain influence in the EU, the window of opportunity for enlargement that opened widely in 2022 might be closing soon.

… and their proposed solutions

This summer, a series of non-papers and other contributions have proposed solutions to address these four challenges:

• Gradual integration is a means of speeding up integration of candidate countries and making the EU’s enlargement pledge trustworthy again by offering tangible benefits in the short-term perspective.
• Reversibility allows reconciling the geopolitical with the modernisation logic and addresses national concerns with regard to candidate countries’ reform reliability.
• Institutional safeguard clauses are a substitute for the lack of reforms aimed at strengthening the EU’s capacity to act.
• Transitory provisions accommodate member states’ opposition to enlargement in certain policy areas.

Germany’s position

In Germany, Euroscepticism has not undermined the government’s support for enlargement, even though extremist parties on the right (AfD/ESN), and less so on the post-communist left (BSW/–), are shaking up the German party system. The former recommends all candidate countries refrain from joining “the Brussels Dictatorship” and the latter calls for a moratorium on enlargement.

The democratic political parties and the German government support enlargement. The idea of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for “associate membership” for Ukraine and “substantial steps on their way to membership” for other candidate countries clearly bolsters gradual integration. So too does the Franco-German non-paper, written on the German side by the Federal Foreign Office. This is also reflected at the party level in the CDU (EPP), the SPD (PES) and the Grüne (EGP). Only the Linke (EL) criticises a “privileged partnership” or “two-speed Europe” and calls for full membership.

Reversibility is key

For the government, the principle of reversibility is a key element. The Chancellor’s letter to the heads of EU institutions proposes a “snap-back mechanism (alternatively a sunset-clause)”. The Franco-German non-paper considers all steps of gradual integration to be reversable. Another non-paper of five member states (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) proposes sectoral safeguards, transitional provisions and institutional safeguards for future accession treaties.

The need to establish the principle of reversibility enjoys wide consensus in the German debate. The Social Democratic and Green political groups in the Bundestag both recently tabled papers with concrete proposals on how the principle of reversibility could be implemented. The SPD proposed a reform of the Article 7 procedure, while the Grüne underlined the less-for-less principle and proposed different safeguard clauses. The Linke is even more critical than the other parties, assuming the EU is aiming for enlargement progress for geopolitical and economic reasons and ready to dilute social, rule of law and democratic standards.

Absorption capacity and the need for EU reform

For the German government, the EU’s absorption capacity is a prerequisite for enlargement. Thus, the accession processes and the “internal consolidation and reform of the EU” should happen in parallel. Specifically, it proposed observers in EU institutions before accession, a temporary reform of the Article 7 procedure and limiting the voting rights of new member states. Beyond these ideas, the German government only called upon the Commission to make reform proposals.

Despite following different ideological reasonings, all democratic parties in Germany agree in principle on the necessity of reforming the EU and making decision-making more efficient. In general, however, there is little appetite to take on the practical efforts involved in that. Where reforms within the treaties are not sufficient, the idea of using accession treaties for limited reforms is supported.

Support for a Montenegro mini-accession

Concerning concrete steps forward in the enlargement process, Chancellor Merz was frank in saying that “[i]t is time for [Montenegro’s] accession to the European Union” after praising the country’s reform progress in June 2026. In the run up to the European Council in October 2026, he also took the initiative together with French President Emmanuel Macron in pushing for the country’s accession. His second journey to Montenegro this year for the summit of the Berlin Process on 22 October, where he reiterated his assessment of June, might be a signal that the German government is starting to invest more in building support for a mini-accession to come soon.

Meanwhile, the Chancellor is also still waiting for a substantial response to his idea of “associate membership” from the Ukrainian government – aside from the rejection of the terminology.

For the German public, enlargement is a topic of low salience. Montenegro is the only candidate country whose membership enjoys support within the German public, albeit by a slim margin (46 percent in favour compared to 45 percent against). All other candidate countries face a plurality of Germans opposing their membership.

Recommendations: the short-term perspective

Against this background, the challenges for Germany’s position regarding the EU’s enlargement policy are twofold in the short-term perspective:

There is the need to build political momentum among national governments in the EU to support rapid progress in enlargement policy while the window of opportunity is open. Additionally, the German government has to prepare for winning the support of German citizens and countering the anti-EU campaigns of political extremists to secure ratification in Germany.

Mini-enlargement

The Irish Presidency should close the remaining chapters in the negotiations with Montenegro, and the European Commission should finalise the accession treaty seeking signature as early as possible. Such a mini-enlargement would send a clear geopolitical signal and strengthen the credibility of the EU enlargement pledge, especially in the countries of the Western Balkans. The provisional application of parts of the treaty, e.g. giving Montenegro observer status in the EU institutions, would show immediately that EU enlargement works in practice.

To achieve such a mini-enlargement, German EU policy should be energised and use minilateral formats to organise support for enlargement. Building a coalition with the “Friends of the Western Balkans” and additional supportive member states would be a suitable approach to convincing reluctant national governments to support Montenegro’s accession. The German Chancellor’s close relationship with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni could be used to establish the coalition, at least before the upcoming elections in Italy.

Making use of package deals

German EU policy should use package deals to facilitate EU enlargement policy. This way, Germany would receive a double return on its investment by using policies, which are anyway in its own interest, as a lever in enlargement policy: The ongoing negotiations for the multiannual financial framework (MFF) offer considerable leverage to win over reluctant countries from South-Western Europe, which support a larger EU budget. Most notably, this could be a way of overcoming French reluctance, which remains a key obstacle to the EU’s enlargement.

Furthermore, German defence policy and its clear support for Ukraine can be a lever for advancing support for Montenegro’s accession in North-Eastern Europe, where the Western Balkans are of low salience.

Gathering pro-European stakeholders

German EU policy should also start to build an enlargement coalition in Germany by gathering pro-enlargement stakeholders. Such a coalition of interest groups, pro-European civil society, diaspora groups and democratic political parties should be empowered to develop campaigns in support of enlargement.

These campaigns need to develop a positive narrative with target-group-specific arguments to bring the candidate countries closer to the German public. They also need to debunk fake news about EU enlargement and the candidate countries and prepare for countering anti-EU campaigns by extremists and malign foreign actors.

Recommendations: the medium-term perspective

In the medium-term perspective, the major challenge for Germany’s positioning on the EU’s enlargement policy is the fading momentum and the potentially less favourable political context within the EU following the upcoming elections throughout Europe. German European policy should already prepare for this situation now.

In the framework of Germany’s clear commitment to Ukraine, the German government should overcome any terminological difficulties and constructively work with the Ukrainian government on a concrete proposal for Ukraine’s interim closer association with the EU. Considering the ongoing war in the country, the gradual integration path for Ukraine is most likely fundamentally different from that of the other candidate countries. Still, there is a need for a different term – avoid calling it “associate membership”.

Maintaining the momentum

Building on its non-papers, the German government should table a proposal for a comprehensive governance framework for gradual integration, including safeguards to ensure the principle of reversibility. This way, the government could give additional impetus to the Council assessment of the Commission’s pre-enlargement policy reviews, which is necessary to speed up the process. To this end, the German government should work closely with the upcoming Lithuanian Council presidency.

Assuming that the enlargement round after the mini-enlargement of Montenegro might encompass a group of candidate countries with a greater effect on the EU’s capacity to act, the German government should consider proposing institutional reforms via the accession treaties.

In parallel to this set of limited reforms of the primary law, the German government should work on a second set of reforms, which can be reached by using provisions within the EU Treaties, such as extending the use of QMV. This second set should be adopted together with the signature of the second next enlargement treaty.

Julian Plottka is a Scientific Senior Project Manager at the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP) in Berlin.

Funda Tekin is the Director of the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP) in Berlin and a honorary professor at the University of Tübingen.

This article was first published in the Berlin Perspectives series of the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP) and has been slightly edited for publication on the blog.

The Berlin Perspectives series presents analyses of Germany’s European policy to an English-speaking audience. The authors analyse German positions on current topics and debates and provide policy recommendations based on their findings.

Pictures: Clear glass jar: Олег Мороз [Unsplash+ license], via Unsplash [edited]; portrait Julian Plottka, Funda Tekin: private [all rights reserved].

EU Analytics – October 2026 review: A vote on EU-China lays bare shifting divisions, and the EPP reaffirms its central role

By Nicolai von Ondarza

On EU-China policy, the right united. And the left split.

In October 2026, a vote in the European Parliament showed how the political map of Europe is changing. When MEPs voted on a recommendation on EU-China relations, the right was remarkably united, with only the AfD-led ESN opposed, while about half of the centre-left S&D abstained. This is one of three key takeaways from my look at October’s votes in the European Parliament and the Council.

Across all EP votes, the EPP once again confirmed how firmly it sits in the driving seat: On most votes, it continued its cooperation with the centre-left and liberals, but formed majorities with the far right on eight votes, including on softening parts of the Green Deal and on a resolution on countering Islamic entryism and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the Council, in the shadow of difficult budget negotiations, consensus was the rule. In only two of 16 public votes did a member state vote no, and in both cases it was a large country being outvoted: Germany and Spain, respectively.

Highlight of the month: EP recommendation on EU-China relations

This month, a recommendation on EU-China policy, adopted on 7 October 2026, stood out to me as being interesting to highlight. The vote itself was on a recommendation proposed by Rapporteur Hilde Vautmans (Renew, Belgium) and called for a hardening of EU policy towards China. Passed by a majority of 454 against 86 with 110 abstentions, MEPs called for a robust economic approach by the EU to China and for pressure on Beijing to use its influence on Russia to help end the war in Ukraine.

It thus fit right into the growing EU discussion on how to deal with the “China shock 2.0”. This was both a topic at the European Council in October and the subject of a Franco-German input paper also calling for much harder EU trade defence instruments. The basis for this was, in particular, a policy shift in Berlin, which used to oppose tough trade measures against China. In 2024, for instance, the previous German government voted against protective tariffs against Chinese EVs in the Council.

A united right, a split centre-left

Four aspects of the vote were particularly noteworthy to me. First, it showed how much the EPP has swung behind a tough trade line vis-à-vis China. In the past, EPP parliamentarians from the German CDU or Central/Eastern Europe would likely have objected to a tough trade policy towards China, but after the changes in Berlin, the EPP has firmly swung behind the hard approach.

As a second point, this vote showed once again that the far right is split on foreign policy: Whereas the ECR and the “Patriots for Europe” overwhelmingly voted for the recommendation, the ESN, led by the China-friendly AfD, overwhelmingly voted against. This, however, is also a shift for me. In the past, quite a few member parties of the PfE like the Italian Lega would have voted against. Even the Hungarian Fidesz – under Orbán very pro-China – abstained:

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU.

The counter development then was, thirdly, that roughly one half of the S&D group abstained – mostly socialist parliamentarians from Southern Europe, in particular Spain and Italy, but also Portugal, Romania and Greece. In my view, this was another case of Spain becoming an outsider in the EU under Pedro Sánchez, who opened up to China while most of the rest of Europe is hardening. The PSOE said it abstained because the text was lacking “balance” in its view. A similar logic was followed by the Italian PD.

Finally, this also played into the geographic distribution of the vote. Due to the Partido Popular and Vox votes, Spain was not such an outlier here. More notable was Greece – without a single vote in favour –, as well as Romania and Slovakia. Hungary was also an interesting case: Not only did Fidesz abstain, but all MEPs from the new government party Tisza (EPP) chose not to vote. In contrast to the overall distribution of the votes, only the lone Hungarian S&D MEP voted in favour:

Support of MEPs for the recommendation on EU-China relations, per member state.

Overall, the vote highlighted to me how the changes in the EU’s positioning towards China led to more unity on the right (with only the ESN fully opposed) while creating new frictions within the centre-left.

Final votes in the European Parliament

In October 2026, the EP had two plenary sessions, one from 5 to 8 October in Strasbourg and one from 19 to 22 October in Brussels. Overall, the two plenaries had 53 final votes recorded on HowTheyVote.eu. Key topics of the plenary sessions in Strasbourg and Brussels were the debates ahead of and after the October European Council, quite a few votes on adopting various omnibus regulations for simplification/deregulation (depending on your political views), as well as the EP adopting its position for the 2027 budget and foreign policy issues such as the EU-China recommendation highlighted above:

Overall, the two plenaries showed the different majorities at play in the European Parliament: About 75 per cent of the votes were passed in broad consensus from (almost) all parts of the political spectrum, with the “von der Leyen platform” of EPP, S&D and Renew at its core. However, only four votes (7.5 per cent) were based on the von der Leyen platform alone. Taken together, the three pro-European centre groups EPP, S&D and Renew still form the basis of the majority for most votes in the EU Parliament. At the same time, the small number of “thin” majorities based on these three groups alone suggests to me that the centre is reluctant to push through narrow votes on its own.

This graph shows the different majorities in this legislative period. Note the relatively low share of votes this month where the “von der Leyen” majority was decisive on its own.

The second observation is that, this month, the EPP has been back to being the most successful group, being part of the majority in 98.1 per cent of the votes. This is also reflected in the fact that eight votes (~15 per cent) were based on a majority formed by the EPP with several of the far-right groups, and in some cases also including Renew.

In particular, there were two politically controversial votes on the methane regulation, where the EPP softened another part of the Green Deal in cooperation with the far right. Another controversial vote was a resolution on the “need for an EU strategy to counter Islamic entryism and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood”, which was celebrated by the far right as a triumph in its fight against (radical) Islam. The resolution itself was tabled by the EPP, and adopted together with the ECR, PfE, ESN and also Renew, in a “classic” left-right division against the S&D, Greens and Left.

Co-voting matrix

The co-voting matrix confirms this complex picture: There is a definitive cluster around the “von der Leyen platform” of EPP, S&D and Renew. However, the distance between the S&D and the EPP is also clearly visible; the overlap between EPP and S&D in one direction (83 per cent), and EPP and ECR in the other direction (79 per cent), is almost equally high.

Finally, the ESN remains in full opposition mode, with strong distances to everyone but the PfE. Interestingly, a small sign of the “horseshoe” theory is also visible: The overlap of the ESN with the Left is just a touch higher than with the Greens, S&D or Renew – precisely because of votes like the one on China highlighted above.

Heatmap of co-voting behaviour in the October plenary. Note the strong centre around the “von der Leyen platform”, but also the distance between S&D and EPP.

Public votes in the Council of the EU

For monitoring the Council votes, the analysis builds upon the public votes published, which are always far fewer than the Parliament’s roll-call votes. October is usually a busy month for the Council, so there were 16 public votes in the various Council formations (after just four in September). Among these, 12 were adopted by unanimity and two more had only abstentions, which means an 87.5 per cent consensus rate.

The remaining two votes had one no vote each, so this was a month without highly controversial votes in the Council. Still, a few interesting points stood out:

• Belgium abstained twice, highlighting the increasing frictions within its coalition government, which then collapsed in early November.
• The only two countries which voted no were Germany and Spain. This fits the argument by Manuel Müller that it is actually small countries which increasingly benefit from QMV, as it allows them to outvote larger countries at times.
• Spain voted against the return regulation allowing return hubs. This is both another expression of the minority position Spain finds itself in on migration – at least until the Spanish elections at the end of November – and one of the few cases I could find where a national government voted against a proposal in the Council because it rejected a compromise achieved in the EP on the basis of a centre-right-to-far-right majority.

Result of the vote on the return regulation. Data source: EU Council.

Nicolai von Ondarza is Head of the Research Division EU/Europe of the German Institute of International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik).

EU Analytics is a monthly column by Nicolai von Ondarza. It focuses on data-driven analysis of EU institutional affairs, looking at voting in the European Parliament and the public votes of the Council of the EU. The articles are cross-posted here from Nicolai’s own newsletter on Substack.

Pictures: all graphs: Nicolai von Ondarza; portrait Nicolai von Ondarza: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik [all rights reserved].

Podcast Monitoring Europe – Rechtsruck im Europäischen Parlament: Was die Sitzprojektion zeigt

Die europäische Sitzprojektion zeigt kurzfristig wenig Bewegung, im längerfristigen Vergleich jedoch einen deutlichen Rechtsruck.

In der jüngsten Ausgabe des Podcasts „Monitoring Europe – Wahlen und Zahlen“ sprechen Christoph Siekermann und Manuel Müller über das Wachstum der Rechtsaußenfraktionen, die Schlüsselrolle der Europäischen Volkspartei und die zunehmend durchlässige Brandmauer im Europaparlament. Außerdem geht es um die Bedeutung europäischer Parteienfamilien und darum, wie nationale Wahlen die Mehrheitsverhältnisse in der EU verändern können.

Die aktuelle Sitzprojektion für das Europäische Parlament gibt es hier.

Die Podcastserie „Monitoring Europe – Wahlen und Zahlen“ ist eine Kooperation zwischen dem Europapodcast und dem Blog „Der (europäische) Föderalist“. Anhand von aktuellen Sitzprojektionen für das Europäische Parlament sprechen Christoph Siekermann, Manuel Knapp und Manuel Müller über die politische Stimmung in der EU.

„Monitoring Europe“ ist auch auf der Homepage des Europapodcast sowie auf allen bekannten Podcast-Kanälen zu finden.

Back to basics is a misleading narrative for the UN’s future

By Ronny Patz

The United Nations has never been only about preventing wars.

There is a new catchphrase that dominates debates about the future of the United Nations: “back to basics”. I want to question both the logic of “back” and the logic of “basics”. I argue for a forward-looking approach instead of invoking a past that never existed.

Proponents of the idea of “back to basics”, a slogan prominently used by the US administration, among others, claim that there was an ideal past of the UN in which the organization did nothing more but to prevent conflicts and wars – and successfully so. In this imagined past, there was unity among member states, and the UN system was not as fragmented, not as complex to manage and not as expensive as today.

But a resolution adopted during the fourth session of the UN General Assembly in 1949 already then highlighted the “problem of the proliferation and overlapping of the programmes of the United Nations and of the specialized agencies.”

Proliferation and overlap were already present in 1949

The “back to basics” narrative argues, implicitly and explicitly, that the UN was created in 1945 out of the ashes of World War II, built on the ruins of the failed League of Nations that had been unable to prevent this war.

However, academic research has shown, again and again, that the United Nations system with its many agencies and related organizations has deep organizational and ideological roots in the League of Nations. The League was never just about preventing wars but also had ambitions related to global health, refugee policy, intellectual cooperation, economic stabilization, and workers’ rights.

When the UN was created in 1945, these and other ambitions were maintained alongside the goal of preventing another global war. Massive humanitarian operations were ongoing under the UN’s roofs in the first years after the war to support the large populations displaced by the war. The Bretton Woods financial organizations assisted with post-war reconstruction. Early on, projects for international development and technical assistance were organized through the UN and its newly formed Specialized Agencies such as the World Health Organization, which succeeded the League of Nations Health Organization.

The UN Charter defines a broad programme

Not surprisingly, the UN’s purposes and principles set out in Article 1 UN Charter define a broad programme around four interrelated goals to “maintain international peace and security”; “develop friendly relations among nations”; “achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”; and to “be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends”. That’s a broad, idealistic programme, not just some basics.

The UN’s so-called “basics” in the field of collective security were so idealistic to even include the possibility that the UN Security Council would one day command armed forces made available by member states. And still, establishing the first major peacekeeping missions around the Suez crisis and in Congo were an innovation, not something that existed from day one. Those missions had to be established and financed against the resistance of veto powers like France or the Soviet Union, both unwilling to pay for those missions.

Today, even “basic” peace missions are being discontinued

This revolt against what today are considered by some to be the basics of the UN’s work led to the first major financial crisis of the UN in the 1960s, which at the time was largely contained by the USA who bought a large share of the debt bonds the UN issued.

Today, many UN peace missions are being discontinued, not because they are no longer needed but because veto powers including the USA are unwilling or unable to agree on them anymore. Instead, they prefer to engage in unilateral wars and invasions, voice threats to neighbouring countries, and sustain decades-old conflicts. It is almost ridiculous to hear the same countries speak about going back to basics.

The world of today is different from 1945

1945 was an important moment for global governance in the wake of a massive war. However, a lot of the progress that the UN helped shape, including in decolonization, had not yet been achieved. When the Charter was signed, the first atomic bomb had not yet been dropped on Hiroshima, so the nuclear threat to human survival was not even considered at the time. Humanity had not gone to space, was not able to manipulate genes, had not developed artificial intelligence, and had not realized that industrial-scale progress would mean the destruction of our planet’s ecosystems and lead to massive climate change.

We cannot go back to basics, imagined or not, when the world of today is totally different from 1945, even if many of the original challenges still exist. So let’s rather work on rethinking what the ambitions of the Charter mean, how we can “achieve international co-operation” and use the UN as “a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations”.

Instead of going back to imagined basics, we need to find new ways

Maybe placing some countries above others in the Security Council does not help? Maybe giving micro-states and the world’s population giants the same one vote each in the General Assembly is not very democratic? Maybe expecting two countries – China and the USA – to shoulder more than 40 percent of the UN’s budget is increasing the risk of financial failure instead of producing global justice? And maybe some of the cost-cutting reforms of the past two years are just ways to avoid talking about how we can build humanity-oriented, fair, and realistic backbone structures of global cooperation for the 21^st century?

Instead of going back to imagined basics, we need to find new ways of cooperating as humanity. Some bold ideas have been around for a long time and may still be relevant, if not more so in times of today’s transactional multilateralism.

Let’s be bolder as citizens of the world

Organizations like Democracy Without Borders might highlight that the UK Secretary of State, back in 1945, proposed a discussion on setting up a directly elected world assembly, to name just one example. Others like the Article 109 coalition remind us that going back to basics could also mean to go back to the drawing board and rethink what we expect from global cooperation.

In any case, let’s try to not just tighten some of the screws in an aging machinery and not to reduce the UN to ideas and practices that it was never limited to. Let’s be bolder as citizens of the world and ask for a UN that looks beyond the basics, that modernizes the machine instead of just oiling its most visible parts.

Ronny Patz is a researcher in the UN team at IDOS, the German Institute of Development and Sustainability based in Bonn.

This article was first published on the blog of Democracy Without Borders.

Pictures: UN Flag Parade in Geneva: EGilham [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons (cropped); portrait Ronny Patz: Thomas Roese [all rights reserved].

How to finance Europe’s future: Why the next multiannual financial framework will be decided by priorities, not by volume

By Friedrich Heinemann

A smaller budget spent on European public goods delivers more Europe than a larger budget spent on national envelopes.

Every seven years, the European Union performs the same liturgy. The European Commission opens with the assurance that the times urgently demand a more ambitious budget. The European Parliament, reliably, bids higher still. Then the member states speak, and the consensus evaporates in two directions: The richer countries reach for the brakes, while the poorer ones quarrel not with the level but with the structure.

What has changed is the environment in which this ritual is performed. And it is this environment that will decide the outcome.

The ritual and its new arithmetic

On 16 July 2025, the Commission proposed a multiannual financial framework (MFF) for the years 2028–2034 of just under €1.76 trillion in 2025 prices, equivalent to 1.26 % of EU gross national income (GNI) against 1.12 % agreed for 2021–2027. The Parliament raised the bid in April 2026 to some €1.94 trillion, equivalent to 1.38% of GNI.

The member states then split along the familiar fault lines. Six net contributors – Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden – met in Berlin in August 2026 and called for cuts of “several hundred billion euro”. The sixteen Friends of Cohesion – Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia – dissented on composition rather than level, protesting that cohesion and the Common Agricultural Policy are “the only policies facing reductions in real terms”. The Council’s negotiating box published under the Cypriot Presidency in June 2026 came in at barely 2 % below the proposal by the Commission, a proposal equivalent to 1.23 % of GNI. The Irish Presidency tabled its version this October, with an agreement targeted for the end of 2026.

Why the 2020 blueprint has expired

The agreement on the current MFF in 2020 rested on two conditions that no longer hold today: acute pandemic emergency, with real uncertainty about the fallout of the pandemic and a plausible risk of a second euro crisis; and easy finance, with long-term EU borrowing costs between zero and one percent, which made a €750 billion debt-financed second budget look almost free. Consensus was cheap: The institutions obtained a growing budget, the cohesion countries transfers and subsidised loans, and the frugal states a burden that was deferred and close to costless in real terms.

Europe’s problems today are, if anything, larger: lost competitiveness, a widening gap in the digital and AI economy, an aggressive Russia imposing a cruel war on a sovereign European country, eroding American security guarantees, and a worsening climate crisis with a lack of global cooperation in climate policy. But this urgency is chronic rather than acute, and chronic urgency does not generate the political adrenaline of March 2020.

Nor is the money cheap: In late September 2026, ten-year German federal bonds traded at around 3.6 %, EU bonds at 4.1 % and French government bonds (OAT) at 4.8 %, the highest since 2008. The Union has learned this the expensive way – interest on NextGenerationEU, budgeted at €14.9 billion for all of 2021–2027, has turned out roughly twice as high, and from 2028 interest and principal together could absorb some €22–27 billion a year.

New own resources: relabelling the national burden

The Commission’s answer is a package of five new own resources: EU Emissions Trading System (ETS1) revenue (around €9.6 billion a year), Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM, €1.4 billion), non-collected electrical and electronic waste (€15 billion), tobacco excise (TEDOR, €11.2 billion), and a lump-sum Corporate Resource for Europe (CORE, €6.8 billion) – together some €58.5 billion annually.

The elegance is deceptive. None of these conjures new money into existence; each claims a base that Member States already use or could use themselves. If ETS revenue moves to Brussels, it is lost to national budgets. In Germany, the Climate and Transformation Fund is largely financed from the revenues of the CO₂ price. What the European level takes from a national base, the national level loses; the same holds for CBAM, the waste base and tobacco duties. CORE is the weakest link: A Commission that has made European competitiveness its priority proposes a levy on corporate turnover rather than profit. This is effectively a tax on corporate substance, which member states would predictably need to offset by trimming national corporate taxes.

The incidence lands, once again, on national budgets, and a tobacco resource would burden poorer member states disproportionately, as the share of poor countries’ EU tobacco consumption is far above their share in GDP. Own resources of this design do not weaken the fiscal constraint. They relocate it and may at best (from the perspective of policy makers) conceal the burden due to increasing intransparency.

EU debt: the gap between rhetoric and use

Could common debt do the job instead? That depends on what European debt instruments are actually used for, not on what they are said to be for. Outstanding EU liabilities stood at roughly €810 billion at the end of 2024 and will reach €1,148 billion by 2030 on existing commitments alone. Of that stock, 57 % consists of loans passed through to national budgets and 24 % of grants to member states; 14 % is assistance to third countries, overwhelmingly to Ukraine, and just 5 % finances EU programmes. Take-up tracks sovereign ratings: Member states with top ratings barely touch these lines, exactly what one expects if the operative motive is the interest advantage rather than the European purpose.

This is why one should listen carefully when Eurobonds are demanded. They are rarely demanded to debt-finance European programmes, but to debt-finance loans to national treasuries. Every member state paying higher interest rates than the EU gains by substituting EU loans for national bonds, against an uncompensated guarantee from the remaining high-rating states. The appetite for a repeat performance is correspondingly limited.

In 2020, solidarity in jointly financing national debts was supported by a symmetric external shock; the French and Italian debt problems of 2026 are largely self-inflicted, and market pressure towards sustainable budgets is desirable rather than a deficiency. On top of this, the political polarisation undermines the willingness for more mutually guaranteed EU debt. It is hard to imagine that Swedish or Dutch fiscal guarantees for French debt can still be an option with a French president from the radical right or left – a realistic scenario after the French elections 2027.

Scarcity as an opportunity

None of this is comfortable for the European institutions, but it is not bad news either. With no large expansion of own resources available and no second NextGenerationEU debt package in prospect, the frugal states enter this negotiation with far better arguments than in 2020, and the ceiling will settle nearer the lower end.

One number deserves a second look. Of the 0.14 percentage points of GNI by which the Commission would raise the ceiling, 0.11 points – €149 billion – is NextGenerationEU debt service. This is offered as a reason why the ceiling must rise: An inherited interest bill, so the argument runs, should not crowd out programmes. Every finance minister in the Union will read that with interest. They are told, correctly, that a higher interest bill must be absorbed by spending less on something else; the headline deficit criterion, which counts interest in full, imposes precisely that logic on every member state. It is what the burden of public debt consists of: Rising interest payment crowd out other spending programmes. Only at the European level does yesterday’s borrowing arrive as an entitlement to a bigger budget rather than as a claim on the existing one. That’s odd. A Union that wishes to borrow like a state must also be willing to feel the cost of borrowing like one.

Almost everything Europe wants to do more of after 2028 must therefore be financed by doing less of something else. The Commission has sketched the direction: €131 billion for defence and space, roughly five times the current level, alongside €175 billion for Horizon Europe. Yet it has ring-fenced at least €300 billion for agricultural income support inside an €865 billion envelope of National and Regional Partnership Plans, which ultimately implies protecting the past before financing the future. The Parliament’s answer is to unbundle the plans and top up cohesion and the CAP; the Friends of Cohesion’s is to raise Heading 1 outright. Neither is prioritisation. Both are the reform backlog, refinanced.

What makes a good fiscal European

If money is scarce, the case for European public goods becomes stronger, not weaker. Defence, digital infrastructure and AI, decarbonisation and cross-border energy networks, and the financing of Ukraine share what justifies European rather than national provision: economies of scale, cross-border spillovers, and free-riding problems national budgets fail to solve. Agricultural income support and the redistributive core of cohesion policy share none of them. They are largely an inheritance, defensible in the last century, anachronistic in 2028.

Refocusing on this scale demands political courage, since it means cutting, in real terms, two policies with well-organised constituencies and a treaty-based claim to permanence. It also demands giving up a comfortable habit of European rhetoric. Fiscal Europeanism is not measured by the willingness to finance an unreformed budget with ever more money, nor by enthusiasm for debt instruments whose principal effect is to lower somebody’s national borrowing costs. The good fiscal European is the one prepared to consolidate and prioritise at the European level too, and who accepts that a smaller budget spent on European public goods delivers more Europe than a larger budget spent on national envelopes.

For the EU budget has no independent source of wealth. Every euro is ultimately carried by Europe’s firms and citizens, whether it arrives as a GNI contribution, as ETS revenue diverted from a national climate fund, as a levy on companies already struggling to compete, or as interest on debt somebody must service. Those who bear the load are entitled to ask what they receive in return, and the only honest answer is European value added.

Friedrich Heinemann is head of the research department Corporate Taxation and Public Finance at the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim and teaches economics at the University of Heidelberg.

This article was first published in the Berlin Perspectives series of the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP).

The Berlin Perspectives series presents analyses of Germany’s European policy to an English-speaking audience. The authors analyse German positions on current topics and debates and provide policy recommendations based on their findings.

Pictures: Hand places coin on scale: Eduardo Ramos [Unsplash+ license], via Unsplash; portrait Friedrich Heinemann: Anna Loges [all rights reserved].

Podcast EU to go – Frankreich wählt: Verändert sich Europa?

In der neuen Folge von EU to go spricht Thu Nguyen mit Yann Wernert, Senior Policy Fellow für Deutsch-Französische Beziehungen, über die bevorstehenden Wahlen in Frankreich 2027 und ihre möglichen Folgen für die Europäische Union.

Im kommenden Frühjahr stehen in Frankreich richtungsweisende Wahlen an, es geht um die Präsidentschaft und noch viel mehr. Die Ergebnisse könnten nicht nur die politische Zukunft Frankreichs, sondern auch die Kräfteverhältnisse in der Europäischen Union entscheidend verändern. Die rechtsextreme Präsidentschaftskandidatin Marine Le Pen liegt derzeit in den Umfragen vorn.

Wie würde sich Europa verändern, wenn sie in Frankreich gewinnt? Was stünde für Europa auf dem Spiel? Welche Pläne verfolgen Le Pen und ihre Partei? Wer tritt sonst noch an, und was passiert eigentlich, wenn die Nationalversammlung sich gegen sie stellt?

In der Podcastserie „EU to go – Der Podcast für Europapolitik“ präsentiert das Jacques Delors Centre kompakte Hintergründe zur Europapolitik. Einmal im Monat analysieren Moderatorin Thu Nguyen und ihre Gäste in 20 bis 30 Minuten ein aktuelles Thema.

„EU to go – Der Podcast für Europapolitik“ erscheint hier im Rahmen einer Kooperation mit dem Jacques Delors Centre. Er ist auch auf der Homepage des Jacques Delors Centre selbst sowie auf allen bekannten Podcast-Kanälen zu finden.

European Parliament seat projection (October 2026): Mostly steady, with slight gains for the centre-left

Deutsch

By Manuel Müller

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
EP2024	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–
EP today	45	53	135	78	184	84	85	27	29	–
Aug. 26 (B)	51	40	118	68	175	77	99	45	19	28
Oct. 26 (B)	52	40	120	69	172	78	99	45	18	27
Oct. 26 (D)	57	37	125	70	172	86	102	45	26	–

Baseline scenario,
as of 5 October 2026.
(Click to enlarge.)

Dynamic scenario,
as of 5 October 2026.
(Click to enlarge.)

It is a turbulent autumn for European political parties. Regional elections in Germany saw the AfD (ESN) winning in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Die Linke (Left) in Berlin, sending political shockwaves through the German political scene. In the Latvian parliamentary election, the AS (ECR) achieved a surprisingly clear victory and, together with its ECR partner party NA, now holds a narrow majority in the national parliament. In Sweden, the Socialdemokraterna (S&D) won the national election but are facing significant difficulties in forming a government. In Romania, the political crisis that has followed the collapse of the governing coalition between PNL (EPP) and PSD (S&D) in the spring is deepening. In Spain, the government led by Pedro Sánchez (PSOE/S&D) has just called early elections for the end of November.

A gentle breeze

But despite all these developments, the political mood in Europe has remained remarkably stable in recent weeks. While the parties of the democratic centre faced strong headwinds over the summer, polls at the beginning of autumn were more like a gentle breeze. Compared to the last seat projection from mid-August, no parliamentary group has experienced significant gains or losses. Even at the national level, the Latvian election campaign was the only event to produce a clear shift in public opinion for or against any particular party in any member state.

Overall, the centre-left bloc has gained slightly – but by so little that it could simply be due to random fluctuation. Taken together, the parties to the left of the European People’s Party remain at one of their lowest levels ever in the seat projection.

EPP falls back

The EPP itself is falling further behind in the current seat projection. In the baseline scenario, it now stands at 172 seats (–⁠3), its worst result in the current legislative term. The large centre-right group is being hit particularly hard by the developments in Romania, where the surge in support that the PNL experienced at the beginning of the current crisis is now waning. Furthermore, the German CDU/CSU has fallen to historic lows following its defeats in the state elections in September. The EPP is also performing slightly worse than in the summer in Italy, Sweden and Ireland.

This is mitigated by modest gains in Belgium and Bulgaria. In addition, the small Romanian EPP member party UDMR would now just about clear the national five percent hurdle.

S&D is recovering only slightly

The centre-left S&D group had fallen to a historic low in the August projection. Since then, it has recovered somewhat, but with 120 seats (+⁠2) it still remains at its second-lowest level ever.

In particular, the Swedish Socialdemokraterna suffered losses in the final stretch of the campaign before the national parliamentary elections in September. Moreover, the year-and-a-half-long decline of the Croatian SDP has continued in recent weeks. The German SPD, on the other hand, has recently gained ground, and the Slovenian SD would now narrowly secure a seat in the European Parliament again.

Netherlands: PRO chooses PES

One party that is currently enjoying particular success in the centre-left camp is the Dutch PRO, which emerged in July from a merger between the social democratic PvdA and the green GL and is leading the national polls by a wide margin. At the end of September, the party held a membership vote on whether to affiliate with the Party of European Socialists (PES) or the European Green Party (EGP) at the European level.

Although PRO’s policy positions are closer to those of the European Greens, an advisory commission appointed by the party leadership recommended joining the PES because it promised greater influence within the European institutions. The party members followed this recommendation by a two-thirds majority.

In the European Parliament, this will initially have no consequences: During the ongoing legislative term, PRO MEPs will remain in their current political groups, split equally between social democrats and Greens. However, from the 2029 European elections onwards, it is expected that all PRO MEPs will join the S&D group. This has been taken into account in the dynamic scenario of the seat projection, which therefore shows a small jump in S&D representation.

RE: Mixed performance

The performance of the centrist-liberal RE group has been rather mixed (69 seats/+⁠1). Its member parties in Belgium, Germany, and Portugal have all recently experienced a slight decline. The two liberal governing parties from the Netherlands, D66 and VVD, are also continuing their downward trend.

By contrast, RE members are now narrowly surpassing the national four percent threshold in the polls in Italy and Sweden. In addition, the Dutch senior citizens’ party 50+ could also regain a seat in the European Parliament. The party last obtained European representation in the 2019 election. Its sole MEP at the time joined the EPP group, before leaving the party a year later. Since 2023, 50+ has been a member of the European Democratic Party (EDP), which is connected to the RE group.

Greens, Left: Mostly unchanged

There are hardly any changes in the Green/EFA group, which elected new group leaders this week (40 seats/±0). While the German and Austrian Grüne have made slight gains, the Portuguese Livre are in a prolonged decline in the polls and would now no longer win a seat in the European Parliament.

Overall, the anticipated loss of the PRO MEPs is a more significant factor for the Greens, as it will reduce the G/EFA group to 37 seats in the dynamic scenario. This is one of their lowest figures since the dynamic scenario was first introduced into the seat projection in July 2018.

The results for the Left group have also remained virtually unchanged (52 seats/+⁠1). While the Swedish Vänsterpartiet and the Belgian PTB have performed slightly better recently than in the summer, the Austrian KPÖ has once again fallen below the national four percent threshold.

ECR: Success in Latvia

The three groups at the far right of the political spectrum – ECR, PfE, and ESN – experienced a decline in the polls during the first half of the year, but gained ground again over the summer. The current projection shows virtually unchanged results for all three of them.

Of the parties in the ECR group, the Latvian governing party AS has the most reason to celebrate. Since its Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs took office in May, the party has surged in the polls and achieved a landslide victory in the national election at the beginning of October. Together with its coalition partner NA, which is also part of the ECR group, AS now holds an absolute majority in the national parliament. This result would give the party four seats in the European Parliament – ​​making it the fourth-largest individual party within the ECR group.

Meanwhile, the Polish PiS is performing somewhat weaker than in the summer, and the Bulgarian DPS would currently no longer be represented in the European Parliament at all. Despite its success in Latvia, the ECR group is therefore only growing slightly, reaching 78 seats (+1) in the seat projection now.

PfE: Gains in Portugal, underperforming in Latvia

Among the member parties of the PfE group, the Portuguese Chega continues to gain ground, now standing almost neck and neck with the socialist PS (S&D) as the strongest national force. In Hungary, former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has managed to slightly improve its poll numbers for the first time since its election defeat in April.

The Latvian LPV, on the other hand, did achieve second place in the national parliamentary elections at the beginning of October, but fell significantly short of polling expectations. Overall, the PfE therefore remains unchanged at 99 seats (±⁠0).

ESN: Maintaining its high level

Within the ESN group, the German AfD has long been pushing the seat projection upwards. However, since the summer, this trend has apparently plateaued, with the party remaining stable at a high level.

Meanwhile, the Italian party FN, which was founded only at the beginning of the year, continues to rise in the polls and is now ranking as the fourth strongest force in the country. Furthermore, the Bulgarian Vāzraždane party would narrowly regain a seat in the European Parliament. In contrast, the Dutch FvD is experiencing slight losses, meaning that the ENS group as a whole remains unchanged at 45 seats (±⁠0).

Non-attached and “other” parties

There has been little change also among the non-attached parties, which fall back to 18 seats (–⁠1) due to slight losses by the far-right KKP from Poland.

Finally, the "other" parties, which are not currently represented in the European Parliament and cannot be clearly assigned to any political group, also suffered minor losses overall (27 seats/–⁠1). The centre-left SD from Ireland and the national-conservative Most from Croatia gained seats, while the left-conservative Bulgarian governing party PB, the Greek anti-corruption party Elpída, and the right-wing populist, pro-Russian SV from Latvia all declined slightly.

The overview

The following table breaks down the projected distribution of seats by individual national parties. The table follows the baseline scenario, in which each national party is attributed to its current parliamentary group (or to the parliamentary group of its European political party) and parties without a clear attribution are labelled as “other”.

In contrast, the dynamic scenario of the seat projection assigns each “other” party to the parliamentary group to which it is politically closest, and also takes into account likely future group changes of parties that are already represented in the Parliament. As a result, the ECR, S&D, and Left groups as well as the group of non-attached parties are currently slightly stronger in the dynamic than in the baseline scenario. In the table, the changes from the baseline to the dynamic scenario are indicated by coloured text and in the mouse-over text. The mouse-over text also lists any alternative groups that the party in question might plausibly join.

In the absence of pan-European election polls, the projection is based on an aggregation of national polls and election results from all member states. The specific data basis for each country is explained in the small print below the table. For more information on European parties and political groups in the European Parliament, click here.

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
EP2024	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–
EP today	45	53	135	78	184	84	85	27	29	–
Aug. 26 (B)	51	40	118	68	175	77	99	45	19	28
Oct. 26 (B)	52	40	120	69	172	78	99	45	18	27
Oct. 26 (D)	57	37	125	70	172	86	102	45	26	–
	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
DE	10 Linke 1 Tier	14 Grüne 3 Volt	12 SPD	3 FDP 3 FW 1 PdF	17 Union 1 Familie 1 ÖDP			25 AfD	3 BSW 2 Partei
FR	8 LFI		13 PS	14 RE	12 LR		34 RN
IT	11 M5S 2 SI	3 EV	17 PD	3 IV/+E	5 FI 1 SVP	23 FdI	5 Lega	6 FN
ES	2 Sumar 2 Pod 1 Bildu	2 Sumar 1 ERC	17 PSOE	1 PNV	22 PP		12 Vox		1 SALF
PL			4 Lewica		20 KO	12 PiS 3 R+	4 Konf	5 Konf	5 KKP
RO			9 PSD	2 USR 1 PMP	6 PNL 1 UDMR	14 AUR
NL		3 PRO	4 PRO	4 D66 4 VVD 1 50+	3 CDA		5 PVV	3 FvD		4 JA21
BE	3 PTB	1 Groen	2 Vooruit 3 PS	2 MR 1 LE	2 CD&V 1 CSP	3 N-VA	4 VB
CZ		2 Piráti			4 STAN 1 TOP09	3 ODS	9 ANO	2 SPD
EL			3 PASOK		7 ND	2 EL	1 FL		1 KKE 1 PE	4 ELAS 1 Elpída 1 MéRA
HU					14 TISZA		6 Fidesz	1 MHM
PT			7 PS	1 IL	6 AD		7 Chega
SE	2 V	1 MP	6 S	2 C 1 L	4 M 1 KD	4 SD
AT		3 Grüne	3 SPÖ	1 Neos	5 ÖVP		8 FPÖ
BG				2 PP	3 GERB 2 DB			1 V		9 PB
DK	1 Enhl.	2 SF	4 S	1 V 1 RV 1 M	1 LA 1 K	1 DD	2 DF
SK				4 PS	2 Slov 1 KDH	2 SaS		2 REP	3 Smer 1 Hlas
FI	2 Vas	1 Vihreät	4 SDP	2 Kesk	3 Kok	3 PS
IE	4 SF			4 FF	3 FG					2 SD 1 Aontú
HR		2 Možemo	3 SDP		5 HDZ					2 Most
LT		1 DSVL	2 LSDP	2 LS	3 TS-LKD	1 LVŽS				2 NA
LV		1 PRO			1 JV	4 AS 1 NA	1 LPV			1 SV
SI	1 Levica		1 SD	3 GS	3 SDS 1 N.Si
EE			1 SDE	1 RE 1 KE	2 Isamaa	1 KE	1 EKRE
CY	2 AKEL		1 DIKO		2 DISY	1 ELAM
LU			1 LSAP	2 DP	2 CSV				1 ADR
MT			3 PL		3 PN

Timeline (baseline scenario)

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
26-10-05	52	40	120	69	172	78	99	45	18	27
26-08-17	51	40	118	68	175	77	99	45	19	28
26-06-15	49	40	122	71	181	74	98	39	19	27
26-04-20	52	39	124	70	173	78	103	36	21	24
26-02-23	54	37	124	64	175	83	104	37	24	18
26-01-07	53	37	122	71	177	80	104	38	27	11
25-11-10	51	37	124	71	175	81	105	39	24	13
25-09-01	55	40	123	66	176	85	105	37	21	12
25-07-01	51	44	124	73	181	80	99	36	20	12
25-05-19	49	40	130	76	179	79	100	35	23	9
25-03-24	52	41	131	73	177	79	99	33	24	11
25-01-27	48	43	130	81	185	77	93	29	24	10
24-12-02	43	41	131	83	186	73	100	27	24	12
24-10-07	44	41	136	79	186	74	96	26	29	9
24-08-12	44	45	137	77	191	73	88	25	31	9
EP 2024	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–

Timeline (dynamic scenario)

	Left	G/EFA	S&D	RE	EPP	ECR	PfE	ESN	NI	other
26-10-05	57	37	125	70	172	86	102	45	26	–
26-08-17	56	40	119	70	175	84	103	45	28	–
26-06-15	52	40	124	74	181	80	101	39	29	–
26-04-20	53	39	126	72	173	84	106	36	31	–
26-02-23	55	37	126	65	176	90	104	37	30	–
26-01-07	54	37	123	73	177	86	106	38	26	–
25-11-10	52	37	126	73	175	86	109	39	23	–
25-09-01	56	40	125	68	177	89	107	37	21	–
25-07-01	52	44	126	75	181	84	101	37	20	–
25-05-19	49	40	132	78	179	82	101	36	23	–
25-03-24	52	41	132	74	179	82	103	33	24	–
25-01-27	49	43	132	82	185	80	96	29	24	–
24-12-02	43	42	133	82	186	77	104	27	26	–
24-10-07	46	41	137	79	187	77	97	26	30	–
24-08-12	45	46	138	78	191	76	89	25	32	–
EP 2024	46	53	136	77	188	78	84	25	33	–

The “EP 2024” line indicates the distribution of seats as of July 16, 2024, when the European Parliament was constituted following the election in June 2019.
Overviews of older seat projections from previous legislative terms can be found here (2014-2019) and here (2019-2024).

Attribution of national parties to parliamentary groups

Baseline scenario: The projection assigns parties that are already represented in the European Parliament to their current parliamentary group. National parties that are not currently represented in the European Parliament but belong to a European political party, are attributed to the parliamentary group of that party. In cases where the members of a national electoral list are expected to split up and join different political groups after the election, the projection uses the allocation that seems most plausible in each case (see below). Parties for which the allocation to a specific parliamentary group is unclear are classified as “other” in the baseline scenario.

According to the rules of procedure of the European Parliament, at least 23 MEPs from at least a quarter of the member states (i.e. 7 out of 27) are required to form a parliamentary group. Groupings that do not meet these conditions would therefore have to win over additional MEPs in order to be able to constitute themselves as a parliamentary group.

Dynamic scenario: In the dynamic scenario, all “other” parties are assigned to an already existing parliamentary group (or to the group of non-attached members). In addition, the dynamic scenario also takes into account other group changes that appear politically plausible, even if the respective parties have not yet been publicly announced them. To highlight these changes from the baseline scenario, parties that are assigned a different parliamentary group in the dynamic scenario are marked in the colour of that group. Moreover, the name of the group appears in the mouse-over text. Since the attributions in the dynamic scenario are partly based on a subjective assessment of the political orientation and strategy of the parties, they can be quite uncertain in detail. From an overall perspective, however, the dynamic scenario may be closer to the real distribution of seats after the next European election than the baseline scenario.

The full names of the political groups and of the national parties appear as mouse-over text when the mouse pointer is held still over the name in the table. In the case of “other” parties and parties that are likely to change group after the next European elections, the mouse-over text also lists the groups that the party might join. The group to which the party is assigned in the dynamic scenario is listed first.

Data source

If available, the most recent poll of voting intentions for the European Parliament is used to calculate the seat distribution for each country. In case that more than one poll has been published, the average of all polls from the two weeks preceding the most recent poll is calculated, taking into account only the most recent poll from each polling institute. The cut-off date for taking a survey into account is the last day of its fieldwork, if known, otherwise the day of its publication.

For countries where the last specific European election poll was published more than a fortnight ago or where significantly fewer polls for European than for national parliamentary elections were published in the last two weeks, the most recent available poll for the national parliamentary election or the average of all national or European parliamentary polls from the two weeks preceding the most recent available poll is used instead. For countries where there are no recent polls for parliamentary elections, polls for presidential elections may be used instead, if the presidential candidates’ polling figures can plausibly be assigned to their respective parties. (This may concern France and Cyprus in particular). For member states for which no recent polls can be found at all, the results of the last national or European elections are used.

As a rule, the national poll results of the parties are directly projected to the total number of seats in the country. For countries where the election is held in regional constituencies without interregional proportional compensation (currently Belgium and Ireland), regional polling data is used where available. Where this is not the case, the number of seats is calculated for each constituency using the overall national polling data. National electoral thresholds are taken into account in the projection where they exist.

In Belgium, constituencies in the European election correspond to language communities, while polls are usually conducted at the regional level. The projection uses polling data from Wallonia for the French-speaking community and polling data from Flanders for the Dutch-speaking community. For the German-speaking community, it uses the result of the last European election (1 seat for CSP).

In countries where it is common for several parties to run as an electoral alliance on a common list, the projection makes a plausibility assumption about the composition of these lists. In the table, such multi-party lists are usually grouped under the name of the electoral alliance or of its best-known member party. Sometimes, however, the parties of an electoral alliance split up after the election and join different political groups in the European Parliament. In this case, the parties are listed individually and a plausibility assumption is made about the distribution of list places (usually based on the 2024 European election results). This includes the following cases: Spain: Sumar: Sumar (place 1 and 6 on the list), CatComù (2), Compromís (3), IU (4) and Más País (5); Ahora Repúblicas: ERC (1, 4), Bildu (2) and BNG (3); CEUS: PNV (1) and CC (2); Romania: ADU: USR (1-2, 4-5, 7-9), PMP (3) and FD (6); Hungary: DK (1-4, 6, 8), MSZP (5) and PM (7); Slovenia: Levica (1) and Vesna (2). When the election comes closer and the parties announce their candidates, the projection uses the distribution on the actual list instead. In some countries, the exact distribution of seats within an electoral alliance depends on preference votes and/or regional constituency results, so that only a plausible assumption can be made in advance. This concerns the following cases: Italy: AVS: EV (1, 3-4, 6-7 etc) and SI (2, 5, 8 etc); Poland: Konfederacja: NN (1, 3, 5 etc.) and RN (2, 4, 6 etc.). Occasionally, members of a single national party split into several political groups after the election; in such cases, a plausibility assumption (usually based on the status quo) is made about their distribution after the next European election. This currently applies to the following cases: Estonia: KE (split equally between RE and ECR), Netherlands: PRO (split equally between S&D and G/EFA in the baseline scenario, S&D only in the dynamic scenario). In France, some polls combine PS (S&D), EELV (G/EFA), PCF (Left) and sometimes LFI (Left); in these cases, the polling figures are divided between the parties according to the ratio in the last poll in which they were reported separately. In Italy, a special rule allows minority parties to enter the Parliament with only a low number of votes, provided they form an alliance with a larger party. The projection assumes such an alliance between FI and the SVP.

Since there is no electoral threshold for European elections in Germany, parties can win a seat in the European Parliament with less than 1 per cent of the vote. Since German polling institutes do not usually report values for very small parties, the projection includes them based on their results in the last European election (3 seats each for Volt and FW, 2 seats for Partei, 1 seat each for Tierschutzpartei, ÖDP, Familienpartei, and PdF). If a small party achieves a better value in current polls than in the last European election, the poll rating is used instead.

The following overview lists the data source for each member state. The dates refer to the last day of the fieldwork; if this is not known, to the day of publication of the polls:

Germany: national polls, 22/9-5/10/2026, source: Wikipedia;
France: national polls, 7-8/10/2025, source: Wikipedia;
Italy: national polls, 22/9-5/10/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Spain: national polls, 21/9-3/10/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Poland: national polls, 9-22/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Romania: national polls, 22/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Netherlands: national polls, 28/9-2/10/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Belgium, French community: Wallonian polls for the national parliamentary election, 15/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Belgium, Dutch community: Flemish polls for the national parliamentary election, 15/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Belgium, German community: results of the European Parliament election, 9/6/2024;
Czechia: national polls, 31/8-12/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Greece: national polls, 15-28/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Hungary: national polls, 18-30/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Portugal: national polls, 14-21/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Sweden: results of the national parliamentary election, 13/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Austria: national polls, 22-23/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Bulgaria: national polls, 29/9-2/10/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Denmark: national polls, 29/9-4/10/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Slovakia: national polls, 21-22/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Finland: national polls, 1-14/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Ireland: national polls, 22/9-4/10/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Croatia: national polls, 22/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Lithuania: national polls, 26/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Latvia: results of the national parliamentary election, 3/10/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Slovenia: national polls, 16-24/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Estonia: national polls, 27/9/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Cyprus: results of the national parliamentary election, 24/5/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Luxembourg: national polls, 24/4/2026, source: Wikipedia;
Malta: results of the national parliamentary election, 30/5/2026, source: Wikipedia.

Manuel Müller is a Helsinki-based EU researcher and the editor of the blog “Der (europäische) Föderalist”. His research focuses on supranational democracy and EU institutional reform.

Pictures: all graphs: Manuel Müller; portrait Manuel Müller: Finnish Institute of International Affairs [all rights reserved].