STRASBOURG – Two members of the Dutch Farmer-Citizen Movement party are leaving the center-right EPP group in the European Parliament to join the national conservative ECR.
Senior ECR lawmakers will approve the removal of Sander Smit and Jessika van Leeuwen from their group at a meeting in Strasbourg this afternoon, four sources said. Euractiv.
The move is a setback for EPP leader Manfred Weber, who has begun tightening party discipline to keep his group in line. Both Smit and van Leeuwen were sanctioned from the EPP leadership in January after not voting against a no-confidence motion seeking to oust Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is from the EPP political family.
With the two additional seats, the ECR will grow to 81 lawmakers, just three seats behind the far-right Patriots for Europe group, which is the chamber’s third-largest grouping. The ECR has a single Dutch MP, Bert-Jan Ruissen, who is a member of a Christian political party.
An ECR source also said Sweden Democrat MEP Charlie Weimers was instrumental in getting the two Dutch members to pass the half-cycle.
In an email to his EPP colleagues – seen by Euractiv – Smit expressed his gratitude to the group after announcing that he and van Leeuwen will join both the ECR group and the EU-wide political party, which includes the likes of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni Brothers and Poland’s Law and Justice party as members.
“Our hearts and doors remain open as before,” Smit wrote, saying he wants the cooperation to continue.
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An unrelated Romanian lawmaker, Luis-Vicențiu Lazarus, is also in talks to join the ECR, another source said.
Lazarus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a developing story.
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