EU analytics – October 2025 review: Less consensus, less predictability

By Nicolai von Ondarza

The European Parliament’s majority is walking on a tightrope.

If this month could have one headline for EU voting, it should be less consensus, less predictability. We see this in the European Parliament, where votes can fail even when the ‘von der Leyen’ majority has an agreement. We see this in the Council, which had, strangely enough, Hungary voting in favour of all proposals the second month in a row, but also one unusually tight vote and lots of individual no votes. Time to dive in:

Highlight of the month: EP vote on simplified sustainability and due diligence

Again, several interesting votes in October 2025 that could be looked at in detail, from the two motions of censures against von der Leyen, a majority with the far-right without the EPP (more on that below), an awful but newsworthy vote on what can be called a “burger”, and a Council vote with the thinnest of margins. Unusual for this column, though, I choose a vote on which we don’t have granular data – the EP vote on the first major ‘omnibus’ package of simplification for sustainability reporting and due diligence.

Why was this interesting? For two reasons: For one, it was the first major test in the overwhelming ambition of the EU to simplify its regulations. This is so strong now that 20 national leaders signed a letter at the October European Council calling on the EU to simplify everything and as much as possible. The new holy grail of competitiveness, at least if you ask the majority of national governments. But despite them calling on swift implementation of the first omnibus, the EP voted against the proposal with 309 in favour and 318 against, to be returned to the plenary in November. As this was a secret vote, we do not have the exact figures on who voted against.

S&D rebels vote against the agreed compromise

But the second reason why this is interesting is that it still shows the fault lines and unpredictability of the current European Parliament. What happened in the week before was that the ‘von der Leyen’ majority barely made a compromise on the omnibus, which the S&D (and Renew) only accepted after the EPP threatened to vote for much further deregulation with the far-right. The acceptance of this in the S&D was far from universal, though, with Lara Wolters, who negotiated on behalf of the S&D, resigning in protest.

From public statements we also know that at least a major part of why the ‘von der Leyen’ platform failed to get a majority were S&D rebels. Expect this fight to be far from over, with the EPP – and the European Council – largely blaming the S&D for not honouring the agreement. EP President Metsola promised that “Parliament will deliver”, hinting that she expect the EP to vote for even further deregulation (a rather partisan view, as highlighted by Thu Nguyen).

The EPP is overplaying its hand

I personally have a different interpretation on what this signals. For me, it is a sign that the EPP is overplaying its hand with its now regular strategy of blinking towards the far right and then expecting the S&D (and to a lesser extent Renew) to accept far-reaching concessions. This time, part of the S&D was not willing to follow, and this sends a warning shot to the EPP.

If it continues to move to the right, the ‘von der Leyen’ majority will collapse. Whether this is the lesson drawn by the EPP, or whether it will want to push for further deregulation with the help of the far right, will be seen in November. What is certain is that the European Parliament no longer has secure majorities, even in cases where the EPP, S&D and Renew agree on a compromise.

Final votes in the European Parliament

In October 2025, the EP had two major plenary sessions, one at the beginning (6-9 October) and one at the end (20-23 October). The first started with a bang, with the twin votes of motions of censure against Ursula von der Leyen and her Commission, one from the far right and one from the far left. Both motions were rejected, notably by a higher margin that the last motion of censure in July 2025. From my perspective, this was also an opportunity for the ‘von der Leyen’ majority around EPP, S&D and Renew to show that they were not withering away if motions of censure come around every other plenary. That it is not say there were no hiccups. For instance, French MEPs overwhelmingly voted against the Commission and von der Leyen, including the French EPP members. Ouch.

In terms of the votes, both plenaries together had 38 votes recorded at HowTheyVote.eu. Amongst those, it was a month in which, not only with the omnibus vote analysed above, the majorities became even more complex. Overall, only Renew won every vote, with the EPP losing a vote for the first time since this series started. This one was on a non-binding resolution requesting the EU Commission to withdraw an implementing decision on gene-modified maize. Although the majority ended up at 71%, it was composed of a strange mixture of S&D, Greens, and also Patriots for Europe and ECR, whereas the EPP in majority voted against and Renew was essentially split. Take this as another example on how unpredictable the EP has become.

Far-right watch: less often part of the majority

Overall, despite influencing files such as the omnibus vote, in total the far-right parties were actually less often part of the majority than in previous months. The ECR only voted with the majority 60% of the time (after 80+% in July and September), whereas the PfE fell below 50% for the first time since I started this series. The ESN were even more of a fundamental opposition than before, voting with the majority only 23% of the time, after 30+% in July and September.

Public votes in the Council of the EU

For monitoring the Council votes, the analysis builds upon the public votes published, which are always fewer. For October 2025, there were a total of 13 votes published under qualified majority. Looking through the data, a few things stand out:

• October 2025 was a month of less consensus: Only 6 of the 13 votes (46%) passed without abstentions or no votes. These included files like pushing CBAM application further into the future, on which everyone suddenly agrees. One decision was passed with 32.1% of represented population against, so just barely below the threshold for a blocking minority. This was the vote on the Council’s position regarding air passenger rights, which Germany, Spain, Portugal and Slovenia opposed.
• Hungary, on the other hand, was again on board: This was the second month in a row without a single abstention or no-vote from Orbán’s government.
• Austria caught the bug of the ‘German vote’: Vienna abstained on five decisions (38.5%), though I personally don’t know whether that was down to coalition internal differences or just reluctance to support EU compromises.
• Germany itself was outvoted twice, more than any other country. As almost always, France was not outvoted at all.

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, where he occasionally also does other institutional analysis.

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