New EU parties and cash fever dreams

Hola! Both the Alternative for Germany and France Unbowed are grinding their teeth as the obscure Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations — APPF to its friends— is about to decide whether the new European parties they have created will get approval.
Both are at risk of missing out on millions in EU cash — and political clout — if the APPF rejects their application or does not make a decision before Monday, as the deadline for parties to apply for EU cash is on Sept. 30.
But what are these new European parties? What happened to Emmanuel Macron’s planned New Europeans project? What the heck is the APPF? How much cash are we talking about? Join me on a hysterical journey to find out.
TWO NEW MOVEMENTS, ONE FLOP: June’s EU election shook up the European political scene, and not just because of the rightward turn. Today I wanted to shed light on how the election reshaped how national parties work together at the EU level in three cases. Two have been successful and are on the way to becoming political parties, one has turned out to be a flop.
Skip this part if you are an EU politics nerd: We’re talking about European political parties, not parliamentary groups. What’s the difference? Parties are associations of like-minded national parties, and their function is to streamline and coordinate at the EU level as well as to organize electoral campaigns. Political groups are sets of MEPs who sit together in the European Parliament.
EUROPEAN LEFT ALLIANCE: On the left, a number of parties — including Spain’s Podemos and France Unbowed — frustrated at how the Party of the European Left operates, jumped ship and started the European Left Alliance for People and the Planet (ELA).
Short and sweet, in their own words: “It has been a number of years that the European Left is not meeting our expectations. All of our members now have been connected at some point to the European Left [party], which is today mostly joining together parties that have no representation anymore in the European Parliament. The European Left has been a great tool, it’s been very active, but it’s not anymore fit for purpose to meet the challenges and the objectives of what is a modern left,” Manon Aubry, leader of France Unbowed and also of the ELA, told me over the phone.
Old-school communism vs New wave left: Europe’s leftist family is facing an intergenerational struggle as old-school communists compete for voters with more contemporary — and influential — political forces, Brussels Playbook reported in August. Recent events have made that even more complicated: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for example, “has caused great disagreement and ended in a compromise formulation that no one was really happy with,” wrote Mikael Hertoft of Denmark’s Enhedslisten party in an op-ed when announcing the decision to abandon the European Left and join the ELA.
Hammering out: Those tensions reached breaking point ahead of the European election. Some national left parties, both in and out of the European Left, chose to sign up to an offshoot electoral platform, “Now the People,” instead of joining the EL’s campaign under lead candidate, Walter Baier, an Austrian communist. (Incidentally, Baier became  a Spitzenkandidat after the French Communist Party prevented Aubry from taking the role.) Now the People was the predecessor of ELA.
Watching the far right: Aubry argued they hope to be more active, with many ideas already in mind. One is to create a section of the party to scrutinize the EU’s far right surge. The other key objective of the party will be to help “rebuild the left in Eastern Europe,” especially in Hungary and Poland. One of the party’s members is Poland’s Razem.
Ouch! “The objective is to have a functional left that can act swiftly to answer the challenges that we are facing and that can be very vocal on those issues,” Aubry said in a clear dig at the party of the European Left.
EUROPE OF SOVEREIGN NATIONS: The far-right Alternative for Germany started the ESN political group not long after being kicked out of the Identity and Democracy group (ID) because of extreme views and allegations of Russian influence. From the ashes of ID came two new far-right groups, Patriots for Europe (home to MEPs from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz) and ESN (made up of all the parties nobody wanted to work with as they were deemed too radical). Now, AfD is trying to register ESN as a political party based in Berlin, to get extra cash (more on that below).
NEW EUROPEANS IS PASSÉ. Emmanuel Macron’s friends had a big plan before the election: unifying the liberal family under one banner (of which they would, of course, be the rulers), and getting hold of EU money through a so-called “Nouveaux Européens” project, Elisa Braun writes in. “We want to convince everyone to join a single [European] political party,” said Gilles Boyer, a Renaissance MEP, back in March.
Reminder: Renaissance does not receive any of the €46 million divided between the various European parties because, well, it’s not a European party. There are two liberal European parties, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and the European Democrats (EPD).
What was the plan? In the aftermath of the election, Macron’s New Europeans were hoping to make rapid progress on creating a party.
What happened? The election happened. And then came a snap election in France which kept the French quite busy. “We’re just not ready,” said Michal Kobosko, president of the New Europeans association and MEP.
Knock knock, anyone there? A senior source in one of the liberal parties told me they have not heard, at all, from the New Europeans. “If it’s not dead, it’s parked,” they said.
Is there hope? A senior official close to the New Europeans argued the project is not dead, and that they never sought to create a European political party. “It is just an association to give structure to the non-affiliates [in the Renew parliamentary group],” the person said, arguing the project is alive and well and they held a coordination meeting at the beginning of September. On verra…
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY: Every year the European Parliament hands out millions to European political parties, and the deadline to apply for funds is on Sept. 30.  
Less cash for everyone: After an exceptional top-up of the budget for election year, the pot for 2025 has decreased by €4 million from €50m to €46m. There may also be two extra mouths to feed, the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) and far-left European Left Alliance for the People and the Planet (ELA) seeking approval as new parties. That means less cash for everyone.
Meloni, AfD, and Mélenchon get more: The European Conservatives and Reformists of Italian PM Giorgia Meloni is the only existing party that looks like gaining funds, up from €4.4m to €5m. Of the newcomers, ESN (led by AfD) would get €2m and ELA (led by France Unbowed) €1.6m.
Liberals, Greens, and old Left biggest losers: Given that 90 percent of the available funds are allocated according to how many MEPs each party has in Parliament, the liberal ALDE and the European Greens will suffer the most after June’s electoral losses. The Party of the European Left will also lose out as many of its MEPs have jumped ship and joined ELA.
*Caveat: These amounts have been calculated with the provisional party MEP lists from mid-July. Those amounts have likely changed slightly and thus the cash allocations for parties and foundations below are indicative.
PARTIES RESTRUCTURING TO MEET CASH NEEDS: After that electoral year bump, parties are planning for a normal budget year — and that could mean cuts. ALDE has fired five people (they called them “campaign profiles”) and hired four new people in other areas, the liberals told me. They have also restructured some units “to optimize resources and streamline Secretariat operations,” such as bringing events and communications under one director.
Greens hope to minimize HR cuts: “The European Green Party is in the internal process of adapting its organization to navigate the changes in funding,” a spokesperson told me when asked about budget cuts, while assuring that  “our staff are our most invaluable resource, and we are committed to minimizing the social impacts of these changes on them.”
What parties can and cannot do with the cash: It can cover administrative and personnel costs, EU election campaigning (which is the main purpose of these EU parties, meeting costs, catering, and so on. It cannot be used to pay campaign costs for national elections or referendums, and funding of national parties.  
MORE MONEY! If you were worried about all these parties losing millions, don’t shed too many tears! There is an extra €24 million cash pot available for 2025 for the parties’ political foundations.
The what? All parties are allowed to set up an affiliated, publicly funded foundation to promote their political ideas via events, training, policy papers, and research projects. Perhaps the two most well-known foundations are the Wilfried Martens Centre (set up by the EPP) and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (created by the European Socialists).
Big four get more:  When it comes to splitting up the cash for the foundations, those linked to the Socialists, EPP, ECR (their one is called New Direction — not to be confused with now-defunct boyband One Direction) and Patriots for Europe (which has the Identity and Democracy Foundation) will all get slightly more money. Everyone else will lose cash.
Far-right and far-left lose millions because of paperwork: The two newbies — ESN and ELA — have both decided not to create their own foundation, at least for now, as it requires too much paperwork and they wanted to focus on setting up their parties. But that does mean ESN will miss out on around €1m and ELA €800k. “You have no idea how complicated it is,” said a person involved in the creation of a new political party, granted anonymity to speak freely.
What the far-right says: “First things first,” Alexander Sell, an Alternative for Germany MEP and chair of the ESN party, told POLITICO when asked about missing out on €1m. “We want to do this process in the proper way. We just founded the group and now we are founding a party and I think we shouldn’t rush into things.”
*Funding allocation if ESN and ELA had decided to create foundations:
What foundations can and cannot do with the cash: It can be used to pay for administrative and personnel costs, the cost of meetings and conferences, and for publications and studies. It cannot be used to pay for campaign costs for national elections or referendums and funding of national parties and foundations.
I AM SORRY. If you thought this EU Transition Playbook was too niche, please skip this part. If not, brace with me as we delve into the world of the Authority of European Political Parties and European Political Foundations (APPF) — deep breath.
The parties’ watchdog: Located in one of the outermost buildings of the European Parliament, lays the APPF, one of the most obscure EU bodies I have come across (so far). It regulates who can and cannot be a political party, what parties can and cannot do with their money, which rules they need to follow when campaigning, and, the most juicy part, scrutinizes the parties’ books and donations in search of illegal financing. Powerful!
But obscure: In 2023 alone, the APPF found financial irregularities in 10 cases. None of them were made public. If the 15-strong staff finds irregularities in the parties’ books, they demand corrective measures and, if the party implements these, the breach is not made public. It is only if the party refuses to make the corrective measures that the authority sanctions the party and publishes details of the wrongdoing.
EVERYONE WANTS A JOB: Incoming EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas has received no less than 2,000 CVs from people jostling to join her Cabinet, Playbook’s Eddy Wax wrote this morning. They aren’t the only ones to be either on the hunt for work or to to have found a new role. Playbook has been providing details on who the incoming commissioners have been hiring. Here’s a recap…
Bertrand L’Huillier will lead Frenchman Stéphane Séjourné’s transition team; Grzegorz Radziejewski is set to be head of Cabinet for would-be Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin; Simonas Šatūnas is to be head of Cabinet for Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius; David Ciliberti is the head of the transition team for Malta’s Glenn Micallef; Claudio Casini is one of the frontrunners to become head of Cabinet for Italy’s Raffaele Fitto; Ioannis Hadjiyiannis will be the top official in the team of Cyprus’ Costas Kadis; Marko Makovec is leading the team of Slovenia’s Marta Kos.
Deep breath…
Jan Hoogmartens is to lead Hadja Lahbib’s transition team; Johannes Van den Bossche will lead the transition team of designated agri boss Christophe Hansen (and Carmen Preising is in the running to be his head of Cabinet); Bernd Biervert will be the next head of Cabinet for Maroš Šefčovič; Tomas Anker Christensen will lead the transition team of Dan Jørgensen; Anna Panagopoulou is set to lead the transition team of Greece’s Apostolos Tzitzikostas; Kevin Barrett will be head of the transition team for Ireland’s Michael McGrath; Alina-Stefania Ujupan will head the transition team for Romania’s Roxana Mînzatu (and Raluca Belegan has joined Mînzatu’s team); Alexander Winterstein will lead the transition team and then the Cabinet of Austria’s Magnus Brunner; Cristina Sofia Dias will lead the transition team of Portugal’s Maria Luís Albuquerque.
CORDON SANITAIRE PUSHBACK: Furious at being excluded from the top jobs shakeup, Jordan Bardella, French leader of the far-right Patriots for Europe group, is suing the European Parliament at the Court of Justice of the European Union. Joining him in the lawsuit is fellow Patriot Kinga Gál, one of Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán’s MEPs. 
Let us in: After the EU election, MEPs from the old guard of groups blocked the Patriots from having any roles representing the Parliament in its committees or bureaus of vice presidents. Gál told me they filed the lawsuit to challenge this exclusion process. 
WE HEAR NAPLES IS LOVELY AT THIS TIME OF YEAR: Top lawmakers from the European People’s Party enjoyed a four-day trip to Naples for a “summer university” — which is basically a chance to hang out and chart a political strategy. The Naples trip was postponed last year in the wake of controversial comments the late Silvio Berlusconi made about Ukraine. Several Commission nominees were there, including Henna Virkkunen, Dubravka Šuica, and Christophe Hansen.
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? We’ve been running profiles of many of those in the next Commission. Here’s a look at Costas Kadis, who was given the oceans and fisheries brief; and here’s a profile of Maria Luís Albuquerque, who has been selected to oversee financial services; here’s what you need to know about Andrius Kubilius, who will be in charge of defense (and space); we profiled Jessika Roswall, the incoming environment commissioner: and also Jozef Síkela of the Czech Republic, who will oversee international partnerships with the EU’s allies.
WHEN WILL THE HEARINGS TAKE PLACE? We don’t know! But it’s likely to be a Nov. 4 kick-off date. “My understanding is that the hearings … will be scheduled for the period 4 to 12 November,” a well-informed Socialists and Democrats official told me. So that means the new Commission could take office on Dec. 1 (assuming there isn’t a bloodbath at the hearings).
Current excitement level: When are the hearings? Someone tell meeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Last word: “Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” a far-right MEP told me, arguing that they have voted in favor of Green MEPs’ proposals in the past and are not closed to political cooperation with anyone.
Thanks to: Hanne Cokelaere, Paul Dallison and Sasha Schroeder.
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