Brussels Chooses Continuity as Parliament’s Two Biggest Tribes Re-Elect Their Chiefs

The European Parliament’s two largest political factions have opted for familiar hands at the wheel, re-electing their long-serving chairs to lead them into another term.

Manfred Weber was returned as head of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), the assembly’s biggest bloc, while Iratxe García Pérez secured another mandate at the helm of the centre-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D). Both politicians have commanded their respective party families for years, surviving the shifting tides of European elections and coalition arithmetic. Following the vote, García Pérez framed the endorsement as a collective achievement for her group rather than a personal triumph.

In Brussels, political groups do not operate like domestic Westminster-style whipping machines, but they dictate almost everything that matters inside the hemicycle. Laws in the European Union cannot pass without majorities in the European Parliament, and no single faction holds an outright majority on its own.

The EPP and the S&D form the traditional centrist spine of the legislature. When their leaders agree on a compromise, files move through the assembly smoothly. When they fall out, draft directives grind to a halt in committee rooms. By retaining their established chiefs, the two dominant blocs have chosen institutional memory and negotiating predictability at a time when the legislature faces rising fragmentation across the political spectrum.

For anyone trying to navigate the Parliament’s labyrinth, the group leader is effectively a party boss, chief whip, and diplomatic broker rolled into one. Groups are not national parties; they are loose continental confederations of dozens of national delegations, each arriving with their own domestic red lines and ideological quirks.

The leaders decide who gets the coveted role of rapporteur — the member tasked with steering a specific draft law through negotiations — and who sits on the powerful committees covering industry, environment, and the budget. In an institution where grand consensus is the official religion and backroom horse-trading is the liturgy, having leaders who already have each other on speed dial saves weeks of preliminary posturing.

With their internal leadership contests resolved, Weber and García Pérez will focus on managing the legislative calendar and maintaining group discipline across their multi-national ranks. Their immediate priority will be coordinating on major policy files, hashing out cross-group compromises, and keeping the grand coalition functioning as legislative battles ramp up in Strasbourg and Brussels.