Guy Verhofstadt stands his ground

Guy Verhofstadt is fighting back — against nationalism.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte are working toward a new political alliance that could oust Verhofstadt from his longtime post as leader of the Liberal group in the European Parliament after next year’s election. The group, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), might even dissolve and be re-created under a new name, officials involved in the talks said.

But rather than engage in party in-fighting, Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, took to Twitter on Thursday to combat nationalism, potentially laying the groundwork for his own campaign as part of a slate of ALDE nominees for European Commission president.

The tweet included a poster showing Verhofstadt, arms raised in dramatic gesticulation. “Nationalism is haunting Europe,” it declared. “I say we fight back!” The post also included one of Verhofstadt’s longtime favorite hashtags: #IAMEUROPEAN.

In response to a request for comment on Thursday, a spokesman for Verhofstadt said he does not think his boss “feels the need to react” to news of the Rutte-Macron alliance, or what that might mean for his role in the party leadership.

Associates of Verhofstadt, including fellow MEPs, said that he remains intent on putting forward potential ALDE nominees for Commission president and that he could even join the race himself, despite the view among many other ALDE officials that he represents an older generation of EU leaders and should step aside.

Other potential candidates on the ALDE slate include the EU’s Danish competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager.

“Part of this is semantics, certainly part of this is egos,” said an MEP who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to provide a candid assessment.

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“I think Verhofstadt might aim high and be ready to climb down,” the MEP said, adding: “The question is, does Macron see Verhofstadt as old politics, which is to some extent objectively what he is, in every aspect? I think that’s a big question.”

“It could well be that Macron is forced to give him something in this gamble,” the MEP said. “But that will certainly also depend on Rutte.”

Verhofstadt’s strategy of putting forward a slate of candidates is designed to push back against the EU’s Spitzenkandidat system, which envisions that the European Council nominate for Commission president the candidate of the party winning the most seats in the European Parliament. ALDE has concluded that the system overwhelmingly benefits the EPP.

The EPP and the Party of European Socialists now each have competitive primary contests underway, with multiple contenders for their Spitzenkandidat nominations.

In a recent interview with the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, Verhofstadt slammed the EPP for blocking a proposal to create transnational candidate lists, and he complained that the system for choosing the Commission president is rigged.

“It’s already an arrangement behind the scenes!” Verhofstadt said. “The deal is done: The absence of transnational lists leads to the EPP being sure to be [first] again.”

Verhofstadt ran as ALDE’s Spitzenkandidat in 2014, and lost to Juncker, the EPP’s nominee. The race was widely viewed as a contest between Juncker and former Parliament President Martin Schulz, of the PES. (Then, as now, the Social Democrats had the second-largest group in the Parliament.)

In the Le Soir interview, Verhofstadt engaged in the sort of criticism of the EU that he would never tolerate from a nationalist or populist.

“Nationalists and populists are not wrong when they criticize Europe,” he said. “They are right when they say that Europe does not work. Our difference is in solutions. The problem, in our opinion, is that there is not enough European Union.”

Verhofstadt’s doubling down on his ardent federalist views has only served to further distance him from national ALDE leaders like Rutte, who believe firmly in the primacy of EU member countries and have no appetite for the pursuit of a United States of Europe. Ironically, critics of Verhofstadt also view him as part of the same old boys’ club of backroom EU politics that he complained about to Le Soir.

Still, Rutte, Macron and other leaders working on the liberal alliance do not want to alienate Verhofstadt, given his important role as Brexit coordinator in the Parliament, making him responsible for securing ratification of a withdrawal agreement, and also considering ALDE’s need for his organizational support ahead of next year’s election.

Just this week, the ALDE leader was in Prague, conferring with Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, a media baron and Euroskeptic who, on ALDE’s spectrum of views, sits at the opposite end from Verhofstadt. And Verhofstadt has tapped a close ally, Dutch MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld, to oversee a small task force on the future of the ALDE group.

The MEP who spoke on condition of anonymity said Verhofstadt might ultimately accept a lesser role as a vice president of the Parliament: “I think the last thing he wants is to no longer have anything.”