6 ’eminent persons’ to weigh ban on European far-right party

BRUSSELS — Six people appointed by the EU institutions will start discussing on Thursday whether the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations should be banned as a European party and lose funding, according to an internal note seen by POLITICO.

The Committee of Independent Eminent Persons is tasked with advising the watchdog for EU political parties — the Authority for European Political Parties and Foundations — on alleged breaches of European values.

Committee members were selected through a combination of political horse-trading, EU countries pushing their candidates, and European Commission officials selecting former peers — raising eyebrows among the parties and foundations they are now expected to scrutinize.

“We hope that the Committee of Independent Eminent Persons will exercise the legally required neutrality, even though people with clear political affiliations … have been appointed,” said Alexander Sell, vice president of the Europe of Sovereign Nations, and the president of its foundation. The ESN is the European home of the Alternative for Germany party.

“In a true democracy, party representatives should not be involved in decisions regarding the funding of their political rivals,” Sell said.

In July, the European Parliament green-lighted the process to deregister and defund ESN after the authority alleged breaches of EU values, including anti-immigration, antisemitic and anti-LGBT rhetoric, as first reported by POLITICO.

The ESN party is a separate legal entity from the ESN political group in the European Parliament, which is home to 27 MEPs. Political groups are parliamentary factions, while parties are broader alliances of national parties that are funded through the EU budget. The ESN political group doesn’t face sanctions.

The committee will have two months to issue an opinion once it gets all the documentation, and then the authority will make a final decision.

Choosing the eminent members

From the Council side, only two candidates were put forward by individual member states, said an EU official, granted anonymity to speak freely about the selection process: German professor of European law Pia Lange and Lithuania’s Linas Kontrimas, who ran to be an MEP in 2019 for a party affiliated with the European Conservatives and Reformists.

The Commission’s secretariat-general put forward former commissioner Martine Reicherts and former Commission Secretary-General Alexander Italianer, who is now also working as an EU affairs adviser at a law firm.

After a political deal in the European Parliament between the conservatives and social democrats, EU lawmakers appointed Luca Vanoni, a professor who specializes in law and religion, and who has been a visiting professor at the Viktor Orbán-linked think tank MCC. They also chose Anna Pacześniak, who sits on the Scientific Council of the European Social Democrats’ Foundation (FEPS).

Spokespeople and officials from the three institutions insisted that all the appointments were in line with the rules, as the law only forbids sitting EU officials, commissioners and MEPs from being committee members. In the case of Pacześniak, the law only forbids current or former employees of political foundations from being committee members but leaves ample room for people who have other types of affiliation.

The rules also do not call for any cooling-off period before taking a committee role, according to the Parliament’s press services.

Pacześniak said her work at FEPS does not involve any remuneration. “FEPS’s practice is to invite to this group people who can critically analyze the current political situation, and not only those who share social-democratic opinions,” she said.

Kontrimas, who ran to be an MEP on the list of the Lithuanian Farmers and Green Union, told POLITICO that in 2019 he was invited to run as an independent candidate. “I did not belong to the party and do not belong to it now,” he said.

Italianer said the consultancy he works for applies “strict rules to avoid conflicts of interest in accepting assignments.”

In the case of Council and Commission, their nominees had to sign a declaration vowing not to have any conflict of interest. In Parliament, nominees “are required to provide the information necessary to assess their eligibility and independence,” the press service said.

Members do not get paid for their participation in the committee, but expenses are reimbursed.