Having these debates at all implies something like a "firewall" exists (or at least should) - otherwise, not much to be seen here. And if there is/was/should be a "firewall", it needs to be held up/broken by the non-far-right groups. Focusing on "voting with" grants the narrative to the far-right.

As for ECR: I guess there are debates to be had whether that's far-right or not, but PfE is usually considered to be to the right of ECR; and as this is about arguments made (primarily) by conservatives, not counting ECR as far-right actually does their argument a favor.

Looking at who enabled majorities puts the agency towards democratic groups - and their willingness to find compromises. Knowing there is no majority via non-far-right groups and still going for the vote is a decision that does not involve the far-right.

The major difference between voting "with" the far-right and depending on far-right votes for the majority, imo, is a question of agency/power. If we were to deal with "firewall" questions on the basis of voting "with", all power lies with the far-right. They alone could make votes "toxic".

Taking this GMO vote: howtheyvote.eu/votes/181829

453 (FOR) - 86 (FOR PfE/ESN) = 367
171 (AGAINST) + 86 (flipped) = 257 -> still passes

On the other hand: howtheyvote.eu/votes/180948

382 - 76 = 306 (FOR with PfE flipped)
249 + 76 = 325 (NO with PfE flipped) -> not passing, PfE votes necessary

For the GMO votes linked in the newsletter, if all of PfE and ESN had voted against, the votes would still have passed. This is not the case for the votes passed with Venezuela majority. Usually, you can flip the ESN votes, but PfE was a cornerstone of the majority.

I argue: The deciding factor does not lie in who votes with whom (I dont think people would argue that unanimous decision are scandalous) but whose votes are **necessary** for a vote to succeed.

One way to derive this: flipping the FOR of ECR/PfE/ESN to NO and checking majority.

Makes sense. Same argument as in the Merz interview then, although the also said they would do that more often (which the numbers don’t confirm). Thanks!

This is actually a pattern that has been visible for a while. I did some calculations to fact-check Merz summer Interview and I found this in quite many of the gen-modified crop votes. Can clean that up and share if anyone’s interested.

Why is this dubbed the “Weber example” now? I missed that…

He continued to say that S&D had voted more often with the far-right than the EPP. Based on all roll-call votes of the 10th term, this was factually false.
Arguably, a quantitative approach to this doesnt even make sense, but imo this is a clear attempt of normalizing exactly scenarios like today.

In his summer interview, Merz made it very explicit that he sees tabling motions and having "one or another" party agree with them as different from cooperating. While that was in the context of 2/3 majorities necessary in the German Bundestag, he mentioned that this regularly happens in the EP.