The Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament remains divided over the inclusion in its ranks of Italian MEPs from the 5-Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle - M5S), torn between the need to keep the group numerically ahead of Eurosceptic and Europhobic forces due to Brexit and the need to preserve the balance of internal forces.
The issue was discussed again informally internally on Tuesday 14 January, since environmentalists had decided in September 2019 not to close the door to the 5-Star Movement (see EUROPE 12331/4).
With Brexit and the reconfiguration of the European Parliament at the end of the month, the Greens/EFA will lose 10 British MEPs, taking the group from 4th position with 73 MEPs to 6th, behind the nationalist right-wingers of the Identity and Democracy Group and the conservatives of the ECR group. These departures would be only partially compensated for by the arrival of 4 new MEPs, with the reorganisation of the European Parliament and the inclusion of the Catalan autonomist movement (see EUROPE 12402/6), reducing the net loss to between 4 and 6 MEPs.
In this perspective, the integration of the 14 elected members of the 5-star Movement would be an interesting option, all the more so as, during the previous mandate, their votes very regularly overlapped with those of the Greens/EFA.
However, while some delegations, including the French and Nordic delegations, would be more open to possible inclusion, several members of the Greens/EFA Group, including the Germans, are opposed to it. They fear that it would unbalance the group by including the Italian contingent, which would become the second largest delegation.
Indeed, questions remain unanswered as to the very autonomy of M5S MEPs in relation to the national party, which, in addition to being involved in various financial scandals, is increasingly seeing defections and internal challenges, in particular because of its opaque functioning.
Moreover, the 5-Star Movement is on a downward electoral trajectory. Still worse, some Greens/EFA are worried about the choices that the M5S could potentially make if the current coalition with the Social Democrats does not hold and La Lega returns to power. Would the M5S then be prepared to reconstitute a coalition with Matteo Salvini's far-right party? Finally, the M5S holds troubling views on the issue of migration.
This is not the first time that the M5S has attracted the attention of the European Parliament. At the beginning of 2017, the former Liberal leader, Belgian Guy Verhofstadt, tried an approach to include them into the ALDE group. This attempt was unsuccessful (see EUROPE 11699/1). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)