GroenLinks and PvdA will not be in one European faction for the time being: ‘Not discussed’

• Roemer Ockhuijsen

  editor Nieuwsuur

• 

  Evert-Jan Offringa

  reporter Nieuwsuur

For the first time, GroenLinks and the PvdA are also joining forces in the European elections: with a joint list and one election manifesto. But after those elections, the parties split again into two different groups in the European Parliament.

Within a faction in the European Parliament, political parties with the same political color and from different countries work together. In this faction, the parties also determine together how they will vote on bills or legislative changes. This does not mean that all parties within a faction always vote the same.

After the elections, MEPs from GroenLinks will join the Greens (Greens/EFA) and the PvdA of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D). There is no plan yet to merge into one European faction in the long term. “We haven’t talked about that,” says Mohammed Chahim (PvdA).

Both factions do not always agree with each other and so the GL/PvdA supporters have some questions:

GL-PvdA members on a bus trip to Brussels

Mohammed Chahim (PvdA) and Bas Eickhout (GroenLinks) together lead the European candidate list of GroenLinks-PvdA. Eickhout is party leader, Chahim number two. According to Eickhout, it is logical that the two parties remain in different factions. “Thanks to the cooperation in the Netherlands, we have influence in both factions. It would be strange if we left those factions.”

But for a long time Eickhout was not an outspoken supporter of cooperation between GroenLinks and PvdA in these European elections. He changed his mind after ‘the rise of the radical right’ in the recent House of Representatives elections, he says. “You can call that progressive insight.”

NRC analyzed the voting behavior of the PvdA and GroenLinks in the European Parliament in the past mandate. This shows that the parties disagreed with each other in 15 percent of the roll-call votes. The analysis also shows that the voting behavior of the PvdA at European level is more similar to D66 than to GroenLinks.

According to Eickhout and Chahim, they now consult more often before votes. “It varies per subject, but we are actually very close to each other on the important subjects. And that is logical, of course, if our election manifestos are the same,” says Eickhout.

The fact that there are still differences between the parties is evident from a statistic that Eickhout himself recently noted https://twitter.com/BasEickhout/status/1779864209636942326 shared. An interest group for environmental organizations gave scores to European groups based on how green their voting behavior has been in recent years. The Greens, the GroenLinks faction, scored the highest with 92 out of 100 points. The Social Democrats (S&D) scored 70 points. Individually, GroenLinks scored 99 points and the PvdA 72 points.

According to Mohammed Chahim, the differences are partly the result of the roles that the European families of the PvdA and GroenLinks took on in parliament in recent years. The Social Democratic faction was often part of the coalition. The Greens were usually in opposition. If, as a coalition partner, you compromise on a bill, you vote against legislative changes that do not fit within that compromise, Chahim explains. The opposition can deviate more easily.

Chahim does not rule out that such differences will continue to exist, but he does think that they will become smaller. “We now operate much more as one faction. That is different from the first four years of this mandate. That intensive relationship did not exist then.”

GroenLinks-PvdA presented the European election program at the joint congress last month. At that conference, one theme appeared to be of particular concern within the party: the war in Gaza and the attitude towards Israel and Palestine. There is also division about this in the European factions, see Chahim and Eickhout. “I think it is unhealthy if we pretend that there are no different opinions,” said Eickhout.

The party’s line is clear, he says. “We are for a two-state solution.” There is no room for members who deny Israel’s right to exist. “Anyone who is not in favor of a two-state solution should ask themselves whether they should be with GroenLinks-PvdA.”