An unsurprising annual congress will be held from 20 to 21 November in Zagreb, at which the European People’s Party (EPP) will be invited to appoint the current President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, as the party’s President.
As the only candidate for this position, whose election was in no doubt on Monday 18 November, the Pole will take over for two and a half years from the Frenchman Joseph Daul, who was elected to this position in 2013 and who had indicated in 2018 that he would not stand for re-election.
After this election, an emphatic tribute will be paid to the Alsatian, a former MEP from the agricultural world to whom the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has always listened attentively.
But Mr Daul’s Polish successor “has great qualities too, which everyone recognises”, observed a source from the EPP group in the European Parliament. While names of potential candidates to succeed the Frenchman have been circulating in recent months, Donald Tusk, who comes from a Central and Eastern European country, quickly established himself as the undisputed candidate.
A devotee of outspokenness, 62-year-old Donald Tusk has, however, sometimes irritated his partners as President of the European Council, in particular by acting from time to time as a national politician on the issue of migration quotas, to which he was firmly opposed.
He never hid his views about Brexit. He has worked openly to create conditions that would delay the country’s exit from the EU as much as possible. He demonstrated this again last week, in a speech to the College of Europe in Bruges, where he compared Brexit to a football match still to be won, which could still go “to penalty kicks” (see EUROPE 12370/30).
In addition to the election of Mr Tusk, ten Vice-Presidents will also be elected in Zagreb. The following are candidates: David Mcallister (Germany), Helen McEntee (Ireland), Siegfried Mureșan (Romania), Avérof Neofýtou (Cyprus), Petteri Orpo (Finland), Franck Proust (France), Paulo Rangel (Portugal), Ivan Štefance (Slovakia), Antonio Tajani (Italy), Esther de Lange (Netherlands), Mariya Gabriel (Bulgaria) and Johannes Hahn (Austria).
No decision concerning Hungarian Fidesz party
Trying topics will probably have to wait: the case of the Fidesz party of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, will not be dealt with in Zagreb, because the committee report from the three wise men - the Belgian Herman Van Rompuy, the German Hans Gert Pöttering and the Austrian Wolfgang Schüssel - is not ready.
The Hungarian party was suspended from the EPP last March (see EUROPE 12218/8).
In terms of content, some resolutions will be voted on, and the EPP group from Parliament will work, in parallel with the Congress, on the priorities of the next European Commission to be chaired by Ursula von der Leyen, who is expected in Zagreb. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)