Brussels – Now the sofagate ends in Parliament. The MEPs, still on hiatus in Brussels in the wake of the Easter holidays, do not stand by and from their constituencies organize the work of the coming weeks. For the plenary session at the end of the month (26-29 April) the two largest groups, popular (EPP) and social democratic (S&D) ask that the presidents of the Commission and the European Council be discussed in the Chamber of the mission to Ankara, to shed light on each other and ask for the head of Charles Michel, guilty of having played the game of the Turkish president.
The mission of Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel in Turkey “should have been a message of firmness and unity in our approach to President Erdogan”. Instead, complains the leader of the EPP, Mafred Weber, “unfortunately it has led to divisions, since the EU has not managed to be together when it was necessary”. Hence the request to schedule the debate, which the center-left also agrees. “EU-Turkey relations are fundamental, but so are EU unity and respect for human rights, including women’s rights”, urges the S&D parent company, Iratxe Garcia Perez, who wants to “clarify” what happened and what went wrong in Turkey.
The frontal attack on Michel, a liberal, married into the same group (Renew) as the party of French President Emmanuel Macron, starts right from the benches of the Social Democrats. The PD MEPs Alessandra Moretti and Patrizia Toia ask their parent company Perez to be the promoter of a “censorship initiative against Prime Minister Michel” for his “obvious inadequacy”.
Parliament against the Council, popular against liberals, Macronians against non-Macronians. However it will turn out the Turkish president has already won. The European Union has fallen into an artfully orchestrated trap, and after that it quarrels and divides.