From love affairs to football, corruption allegations to insults to bosses, MPs can lose their political footing in a variety of ways. By the end of this European Parliament, 50 MEPs did not have a group, so how did they get there?
advertisementPolitical attention ahead of the EU elections is focused on the major political parties, especially as right-wing groups are expected to rise.
But there is one party caucus that has been on the rise in recent years, part of a trend that is likely to continue. That’s dozens of homeless MPs who are not affiliated with any political group at all.
In February 2020, just after UK MPs left the EU due to Brexit, only 28 EU MPs held their seats as independents and were not affiliated with any of the seven organized parties in parliament.
The current quota is 50, and according to a Euronews Ipsos poll, there is a possibility that 68 of the 720 seats will be in the European Parliament elections in June.
It may also be due to the fact that entire national parties, such as Italy’s Five Star Movement, are dissociated from the broader EU union. But sometimes the reasons are more personal or mundane.
From romance to football, corruption allegations to insulting bosses, Euronews looks at how members of parliament’s political outgroups got there.
scandalous
In December 2022, the European Parliament was hit with allegations that foreign powers were trying to interfere in the democratic process through bribery. The ongoing political scandal is the biggest in the history of EU institutions, affecting their credibility and public trust.
This became known as “Qatargate” and led to a series of internal reforms and the arrest of eight people. They include three former Socialist Party members currently facing preliminary charges: Greek Eva Kairi, Italian Andrea Cozzolino, and Belgian Marc Talavera.
All three have maintained their innocence throughout the Qatargate investigation.
Khairi was deputy speaker of parliament at the time, but he was expelled from the Socialist Party and Democratic Party group on suspicion of criminal association, corruption and money laundering.
Two others decided to resign from the group, and Talavera also resigned from the parliamentary delegation responsible for relations with the Arab Peninsula. All three remain members of Congress.
This is not the only scandal to hit the European Parliament recently. Earlier this year, Latvian parliamentarian Tatyana Judanoka was accused of spying for the Kremlin, but she denied her accusations in a video posted on Facebook.
According to media reports, other Latvian MPs have also warned that Judanoka may not be an isolated case.
She had already been expelled from her Green Party/EFA in 2022 for voting against a resolution condemning Putin’s military invasion of Ukraine.
people I hate
In early 2021, Viktor Uspaskić, the only member of the Lithuanian Labor Party, was expelled from the liberal Renew Europe group. reason? In a video posted on social media, he called LGBT people “perverts” who “must not be tolerated.”
Lithuanian parliamentarians later apologized, but the group still voted for his expulsion.
As Uspaskich learned, hurling insults is always likely to get you into trouble at work, but especially if it’s directed at your boss.
Sadly, this may have been news to Hungarian parliamentarian Tamás Deutsch. In 2020, he likened Manfred Weber, the German leader of the European People’s Party, to the Gestapo.
advertisementFor this comment, he was suspended from the centre-right group. Just a year later, his entire Fidesz delegation left his EPP, joined by other members of his National Party.
(alleged) bullies
French far-right lawmaker Hervé Jubin was found guilty of domestic violence in November 2022, and the verdict, which he had been appealing since 2021, has been finalized. His party, Marine Le Pen’s National Assembly, sacked him, and Jubin has been acting alone on parliament’s budget committee. Since then.
On the other side of the political spectrum, left-wing Greek lawmaker Alexis Georgulis has been charged with rape and assault in connection with a complaint filed by a woman following an incident in Brussels in 2020. As a result, he was expelled from the SYRIZA party.
Belgian authorities last year sought to have his parliamentary immunity lifted. Georglis has maintained that the woman’s accusations are “false” and that she is innocent.
Just a few months later, the left faced another internal firing after French lawmaker Anne-Sophie Pelletier reported 13 separate reports of “harassing, inappropriate and offensive” behavior towards parliamentary aides.
advertisementHer political party, France Insoumise, announced her expulsion in December 2023.
Mr. Pelletier strongly denied the allegations, claiming that he had been cleared of the charges by an investigation by Parliament’s anti-harassment committee.
Nonconformity
Sometimes politicians act alone because politics is no longer working.
In January 2022, Jörg Muyten, the longtime leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, resigned over concerns that the party was moving too far to the right.
“There are definitely totalitarian overtones there,” he told German media.
advertisementThe far-right Identity and Democracy group’s political policies also did not convince Dutch parliamentarian Marcel de Graaf, but for very different reasons.
De Graaf will be suspended from the group in 2022 for being too pro-Moscow. He then left the ID forever, claiming it was anti-Russian.
He’s not the only one seen as associating with the wrong crowd.
Back in October 2023, European Socialists suspended the parliamentary status of three Slovak parliamentarians, Monika Benova, Robert Heysel, and Katarina Ros Nebedalova, following the formation of a government with the far-right Slovak People’s Party.
The Socialist Party and Democratic Party said in a statement announcing the coalition agreement that it was “incompatible” with progressive values, citing positions on the Ukraine war, immigration, the rule of law and LGBT rights.
advertisementCatalan separatists led by Carles Puigdemont also faced criticism from other major groups.
After Catalonia’s controversial 2017 referendum on independence, Puigdemont fled Spain’s judiciary and settled in Waterloo, Belgium, where he ran as an independent candidate alongside colleague Antoni Comin in the 2019 European elections.
A request by fellow party member Clara Ponsati to join the Green Party/EFA group was subsequently rejected, as the group was already hosting another left-wing Catalan independence party.
The request caused a split within the Green Party, as the conservative Flemish party NVA had supported Mr Puigdemont during his self-imposed exile in Belgium. The trio withdrew when it became clear that they would not be able to secure the votes to join the Green Party, and now operate as independents. This was also not a first for Puigdemont, who was expelled by the liberal wing of the European Democratic Party of Catalonia in 2018.
iconoclasts
The reasons why MPs leave political organizations can be difficult to neatly categorize, and the reasons are as unique as politics.
advertisementThe same goes for far-right lawmaker Francesca Donato, who left the party in opposition to a package of anti-coronavirus measures it supported.
Donato judged the decree to be “killing freedom” and “discriminatory,” so he abandoned Matteo Salvini’s Lega party and joined the Cristiana Democratic Party, becoming an independent member of parliament.
Some simply followed their hearts.
Former Green Party MP Martin Buschmann resigned after it was revealed that he was a member of Germany’s far-right NPD party in the 1990s.
He explains that the decision was personal, not political. The underprivileged lover later told the media that she was simply young and stupid and had fallen in love with a woman from across the political divide.
advertisementIt was a different, deeper kind of love that persuaded Greek parliamentarian Theodoros Zagorakis to leave his political party, soccer.
Zagorakis, a former professional player and president of PAOK FC, one of the country’s two biggest soccer clubs, apparently could not accept the decision to exclude PAOK from Greece’s top flight.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis himself expelled Zagorakis from his New Democracy party in early 2020, but the former footballer managed to find a new home in Europe among the socialists in just two weeks.
