EU Analytics – March 2026 review: The unpredictability of a shifting EU political landscape

By Nicolai von Ondarza

On the EU-US trade “deal”, EPP and S&D showed their ability to compromise, whereas the far-right was divided.

March 2026 was another month of two-faced European politics. In high politics, the EU agenda was dominated by the US/Israel war against Iran and the fallout on energy prices, security, the NATO alliance, Ukraine and much more. On the other side, a lot had already been planned for the regular institutions in March: A European Council focused on competitiveness, two plenaries of the European Parliament with crucial votes on migration, trade policy and more, as well as new trade and security partnerships, for instance with Australia, Iceland or Ghana.

Both faces were also visible in the votes in the EP, which had most votes dominated by the ‘von der Leyen’ majority, but a crucial far-right enabled policy change on migration. In the Council, we had very few public votes, but the one on the EU’s climate goals revealed an area where the Visegrád Four, from Poland to Hungary, were united against the rest of the EU.

Time to dive in:

Highlight of the month: Implementation of the EU-US trade “deal”

Amongst several interesting votes this month I choose the EP votes adopting two aspects of the EU-US Turnberry trade “deal”, specifically implementing the lowering of tariffs on specific US goods. The votes were interesting to me for three reasons:

For one, they showed the power the EP has on trade policy, as it had postponed the vote several times in face of Trump’s threats over Greenland and the quickly changing US trade policy. The version that was finally adopted includes safeguards, so that the EU can suspend the agreement if Trump returns to threatening the EU or its member states, for instance by reimposing new tariffs. In practical terms, I’d argue that currently the EU Parliament is stronger on trade than the US Congress.

Secondly, it was also a vote that tested the ability of the EPP and the S&D, in particular, to find a compromise on trade policy. The S&D was much more reluctant to adopt the implementation, but grudgingly accepted it with the suspension clause (full voting data at HowTheyVote.EU). Equally interesting, Trump’s supposed “Patriotic allies” in Europe are becoming deeply uncomfortable with being too strongly associated with him. In consequence, here it was the far-right that was split: The ECR mostly voted for the implementation, while the majority of the “Patriots for Europe” voted against or abstained, as did the AfD-led ESN (which still courts the MAGA republicans). From the Patriots, this included all of Hungary’s Fidesz abstaining, despite Orbán seeking Trump’s and Vance’s endorsement ahead of the crucial upcoming elections.

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU. (Click to enlarge.)

In turn, this thirdly also creates an interesting map if you look at voting of MEPs by member state. The Turnberry deal got the majority of support across most of Europe, with particularly high levels of favourable votes in Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, while it got 0 per cent of support from Hungary, almost none from France and only about a third each from Austria and Slovakia.

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU. (Click to enlarge.)

Final votes in the European Parliament

In March 2026, the EP had two plenary sessions, one from 9-12 March in Strasbourg and one from 25-26 March in Brussels. Both plenary sessions together had 44 votes recorded at HowTheyVote.EU. Looking at the data from these votes, a contradictory picture emerges.

On first sight, these were two plenaries where the usual “von der Leyen” platform of EPP, S&D and Renew won the day. If you look at which party groups were most often in the majority and thus won most votes, these were the EPP (97.7%), the S&D and Renew (95.5% each). In contrast, the ESN stood at 25% of the votes, and even the ECR (70.5%) was below the Greens (84.1%).

On top of that, the three pro-European groups from the centre voted together 93.2% of the time, showing that, in principle, the centre can stand together. These included high-profile votes such as on the application of the EU-US trade deal, over which the EPP and the S&D had discussed controversially before. The three groups also had the highest overlap in terms of co-voting, with the S&D and Renew even voting together 100% of the time.

Data source: HowTheyVote.EU. (Click to enlarge.)

Only one of the plenary votes was won by the “Venezuela majority” of EPP with the far-right groups. That vote, however, carried a special weight. It was the vote on the return hubs, and thus a continuation of the EPP voting with the far-right on EU migration policy. On this vote specifically, the German press agency DPA had previously reported evidence that the EPP did not only vote with the far-right from committee level to fending off all amendments at the plenary, but also coordinated with all three far-right groups via WhatsApp and physical meetings beforehand. This reportedly also included taking on some of their proposed changes.

What’s more, after the vote on return hubs was adopted in the plenary, the far-right stood up for standing ovations, later celebrating that “the era of deportations has begun”. So, in quantitative terms, the far-right was relevant for the majority in only one vote, but this was a vote that really changes EU policy.

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 March 2026, eleven public votes have been recorded. Of these, four were adopted by unanimity and five with only abstentions, signalling a usual degree of consensus. Still, a few interesting bits:

• The most noteworthy vote was certainly the one on the EU climate target for 2040. Contrary to the dismantling/simplification of much of the Green Deal regulation, here the EU Parliament and majority of the Council stuck to ambitious goals. In the Council, the full “Visegrád Four” – Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – voted together against this, while Belgium abstained. Despite the differences between Poland and the rest of the V4 on other issues, on anti-climate legislation they find a common ground.
• Estonia abstained on three interlinked votes, all concerning reforms of the Crisis Management and Deposit Scheme as part of the resolution mechanism for the EU’s (still not completed) banking union.
• Hungary voted no twice and abstained twice, so was in the minority at roughly a third of the votes. The other No vote was on the implementation of bilateral safeguard clauses on the Mercosur Trade Agreement. This is in contrast to the other Mercosur-sceptics, who either abstained (Austria, Belgium) or voted in favour (e.g. France, Poland) of the safeguard.

Public vote on an amending regulation concerning the setting of a Union intermediate climate target for 2040. Source: Council of the EU. (Click to enlarge.)

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