Power play in European Parliament

Summary

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Brussels Playbook Podcast

Episode: Power play in European Parliament
Date: February 17, 2026
Host: Zoya Shevdolovic (POLITICO’s Chief EU Correspondent)
Guest: Ian Wishart (Senior European Politics Editor)

Main Theme

Today’s episode dives into the Machiavellian mood in Brussels as MEPs prepare for a midterm power reshuffle in the European Parliament—spotlighting the ongoing intrigue over the Parliament presidency, the far right’s bid for parliamentary power, a brewing culture war over transgender rights, and growing efforts to undo Brexit through cultural and educational ties.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Midterm Power Shuffle in the European Parliament

(00:57 – 05:41)

• Gossip and jockeying begins ahead of schedule:

  • Normally the Parliament’s top jobs are reshuffled midterm, but chatter and manoeuvring has started unusually early—less than halfway through the 5-year term.
  • “We're not even at the two and a half year mark yet, and already there's some gossip. Well, quite a lot of gossip going on in the corridors, isn't there?”
    — Zoya Shevdolovic, 01:17

• Roberta Metsola’s unprecedented third-term bid:

  • The current Parliament President, Malta’s Roberta Metsola, is rumored to seek a rare third term—something never done before.
  • “It's quite an open secret that she wants to run for a third term... Max [Guerrera] quotes somebody who says she's in full campaign mode.”
    — Ian Wishart, 01:54

• Power dynamics and coalition politics:

  • Metsola is strongly backed by Manfred Weber, head of the influential EPP.
  • The Socialists, who claim there was a power-sharing “job swap” deal, aren’t fielding a strong candidate—possibly in exchange for keeping Antonio Costa as European Council President.
  • “...they're not putting their own strong candidate forward. And the whispers of this is because they're quite happy with Antonio Costa... Maybe if we allow Metsola to get another extension... then maybe we'll get to keep Costa.”
    — Zoya Shevdolovic, 03:10

• Jostling for committee chairs and vice presidencies:

  • It’s not just about the presidency—committee chairs and vice presidencies are in play, with heightened tension due to a surge in far-right MEPs seeking representation.
  • “The rise in MEPs from the far right means that they're going to want those types of jobs... there's going to be so much jostling for them to get jobs after the halfway point.”
    — Ian Wishart, 04:02

• Far-right representation and legal challenges:

  • Far-right MEPs argue for a share of key roles, pointing to their increased numbers and hypothetical scenarios like Marine Le Pen’s ally Jordan Bardella potentially becoming President of France.
  • “It would be quite absurd if we have one running the second largest economy in the EU, but none in any committees in the European Parliament.”
    — Zoya Shevdolovic, 04:54
  • A case is before the Court of Justice of the EU on whether blocking far-right MEPs from roles is legal.

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2. Culture Wars Come to Brussels: The Trans Rights Debate

(05:49 – 08:56)

• Trans rights emerge as a flashpoint in EU institutions:

  • The debate, long prominent in the US and UK, is intensifying in Brussels, with anti-trans activists gaining a platform—including in Parliament.
  • “A controversial subject that's raged in the US and Britain for a number of years now has suddenly emerged as a big thing in Brussels.”
    — Ian Wishart, 06:26

• Hungarian influence and new players:

  • MCC Brussels, a think tank funded by Viktor Orbán's government, helps organize anti-trans events and speakers in Parliament.
  • “It's no accident that some of these events are happening with the support of... MCC Brussels... funded by the Hungarian government.”
    — Zoya Shevdolovic, 06:51

• Far-right MEPs create platform for campaigners:

  • Example: A German AfD MEP invited Billboard Chris, a prominent anti-trans YouTuber, to a parliamentary event.

• Fear of normalization and concern from watchdogs:

  • “Groups that monitor hate and extremism worried... anti trans rhetoric is becoming more visible, more normalized, more mainstream.”
    — Zoya Shevdolovic, 08:32

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3. Political Headlines: Macron’s “Far-Right Proofing” & EU Budget

(09:09 – 09:49)

• Macron’s efforts to block a far-right presidential succession:

  • The French president is strategically appointing allies to key posts as he looks toward the 2027 election.

• Ecofin/Finance Ministers Meeting:

  • EU finance ministers to discuss the multi-annual financial framework (MFF) and support for Ukraine.

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4. Undoing Brexit, One Artist and Student at a Time

(09:49 – 12:44)

• British artists’ struggle with post-Brexit touring:

  • MEPs from the Culture Committee are in London discussing the challenges UK musicians and actors face touring the EU post-Brexit.
  • “Brexit happened, it hit musicians in the UK quite hard... filling in loads of paperwork, applying for visas... it was tantamount to like ending their careers.”
    — Ian Wishart, 10:37
  • Elton John called the British government “philistines” over the issue.

• Not just stars—students as well:

  • MEPs are also seeking greater cooperation via the Erasmus+ education exchange.
  • Recent deal: UK to rejoin Erasmus in December (costing £570 million).

• Signs of an EU-UK “reset”:

  • The UK government under Keir Starmer is “really trying to bring the UK back towards the EU” (12:22) — whether due to conviction or geopolitics.

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5. Brussels Lifestyle: The Cost of Coffee

(13:09 – 13:44)

• Soaring coffee prices fuel watercooler talk in the EU quarter:
  • “As of this week, they've raised their prices... €5.20, Ian.”
    — Zoya Shevdolovic, 13:10
  • VAT cut from 21% to 12% may bring relief, but coffee lovers are feeling the pinch.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The vibe in Brussels today is Machiavellian as MEPs quietly size each other up ahead of a midterm power reshuffle.”
  — Zoya Shevdolovic, 00:19
• “Isn't it nice that proper politics breaks out in the EU, don't you think?”
  — Ian Wishart, 03:46
• “People in Brussels have often thought they're above those sorts of issues, haven't they?”
  — Ian Wishart, 08:28
• “Brexit never goes away, does it?”
  — Ian Wishart, 10:14
• “I hear you eat Brexit for breakfast.”
  — Zoya Shevdolovic, 10:15
• “It's very tasty, but it's past its sell by date.”
  — Ian Wishart, 10:18

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Power shuffle in Parliament: 00:57 – 05:41
• Culture wars: Trans rights: 05:49 – 08:56
• Headlines: Macron, Ecofin: 09:09 – 09:49
• UK artists and Erasmus post-Brexit: 09:49 – 12:44
• Coffee prices in Brussels: 13:09 – 13:44

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Tone & Style

Conversational, slightly cheeky, and full of inside-Brussels banter—true to POLITICO’s style, with clear reporting and a dash of irreverence.

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Transcript

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Today's episode is Presented by Amazon. 60% of sales on Amazon come from independent sellers across Europe. Over 280,000 small and medium enterprises partner with Amazon to grow their business. Learn more at aboutamazon.eu Good morning.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

It's Tuesday, February 17th, and this is the Brussels Playbook podcast. The vibe in Brussels today is Machiavellian as meps quietly size each other up ahead of a midterm power reshuffle. Also on the pod today, who's bringing culture wars to Brussels and undoing Brexit, one student singer and actor at a time. I'm Zoya Shevdolovic, POLITICO's chief EU correspondent, and with me today is our senior European politics editor, Ian Wishart. Hey, Ian.

[Ian Wishart]

Morning, Zoya. Hello, everyone.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

It's been a while. What have you been doing since you've been in our lives?

[Ian Wishart]

I've been working very hard, as you.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Know, or hardly working. All right, let's get to it, Ian. There's been some shenanigans in the European Parliament, which there often are, but this time it's from our colleague Max Guerrera. Picking up on some stuff brewing where they're really talking about a jobs reshuffle. Already. We're not even halfway through the term.

[Ian Wishart]

No, the term, of course, lasts five years, two and a half years in. They usually talk about reshuffling certain jobs, perhaps looking at a new president, looking at new committee chair people. But, yeah, we're not even at the two and a half year mark yet, and already there's some gossip. Well, quite a lot of gossip going on in the corridors, isn't there?

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

And the biggest one, of course, is around the Parliament presidency. Roberta Matsola, our Maltese president, she's been in post, she's already been renewed once, and now there's talk about her actually getting an unprecedented third renewal in, and that really has never happened before. I mean, that's quite astonishing.

[Ian Wishart]

Well, she's a really serious politician in Brussels at the moment, in the way, say, previous European Parliament presidents haven't been. So she's worth keeping an eye on. And I think it's quite an open secret that she wants to run for a third term. That's certainly what people in the Parliament say, and she certainly hasn't denied it. She hasn't confirmed she's running again. But I think Max, as we can see from the story that's out on, on the Politico website today, Max quotes somebody who says she's in full campaign mode. I mean, opposition meps might say bad anyway, but I think it's quite interesting that this is already. I mean, how long has it been since the election? Not about 18 months or so.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

I mean, June 2024 is when it's.

[Ian Wishart]

Almost a constant campaign. I think that's the way that the European Parliament is shaping up now.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah. And the thing about Roberta Mazzola is that she's backed by Manfred Webber, the all powerful chief of the epp, and he's the guy who's pushing some of this through to say, look, we're onto a good thing. She is very powerful. She has cut through, let's keep her.

[Ian Wishart]

The other thing that's quite interesting is that the socialist meps don't seem to be getting together to put forward their own candidate. And that's obviously sort of. I'm not saying Matsuda will get the job by default, but that obviously pushes her further forward.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

That's right. And they should, because they claim, and have claimed for, you know, a year and a half now, that there is a power sharing agreement that they made with the EPP where the socialists would get a shot at the parliament presidency. There would be kind of a job swap. But what we're hearing is there, as you say, they're not putting their own strong candidate forward. And the whispers of this is because they're quite happy with Antonio Costa, the European Council president, and they want to keep him. And so there is this kind of tension. Maybe if we allow Metsola to get another extension, let's say, then maybe we'll get to keep Costa.

[Ian Wishart]

Oh, isn't it nice that proper politics breaks out in the eu, don't you think?

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Oh, I live for it. I breathe for it, Ian. It's not just the presidency. Right. It's also the vice presidencies, it's the chair roles of the various committees. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.

[Ian Wishart]

And that's something I think is going to be controversial because the rise in MEPs from the far right means that they're going to want those types of jobs. And the epp, the center right group, has always said there's some kind of cordon sanitaire around the further right MEPs that's not lasted in terms of relying on the far right groups for votes. So far, they haven't got any of the influential jobs, but there's going to be so much jostling for them to get jobs after the halfway point.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah. And the point that the far right meps make is, hey, this is meant to be a representative house. We have had an unprecedented increase in the number of MEPs well, imagine also.

[Ian Wishart]

Jordan Badella becoming president of France. You've got the second biggest country in the eu. It's very difficult to say that his party can't be represented in any influential job in the European Parliament.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Exactly. And I mean, he could be president in 2027, by the way, an MEP himself. So, you know, it would be quite absurd if we have one running the second largest economy in the eu, but none in any committees in the European Parliament.

[Ian Wishart]

But there are obviously arguments to say that they should be blocked. And then plenty of MEPs in the European Parliament from the center ground will say that those MEPs should be blocked.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

That's right. And there's actually a court of justice of the EU case that's ongoing. The far right has gone to the EU's top court and wants to sort of have the court weigh in, say whether it's lawful or unlawful to have them cut out of that process. And so essentially, that is where we're at. We're waiting on the outcome of that, but the far right is definitely clamoring to get some of those nice juicy jobs.

[Ian Wishart]

Okay, well, it's nice to talk about the European Parliament, and this is obviously something that will continue for the next year, 18 months.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

That's right. And we're going to also be hearing about the leadership of the various groups, too. So plenty there to talk about. All right, Ian, let's move on to our second story. This is about a fight that's increasingly visible here in Brussels, and it's over trans rights. Our colleague Murray Eccles has a great piece out this morning, and she's looking at how anti trans activists are gaining a larger platform right here in Brussels, including inside the EU institutions. We're seeing a few events that have been cropping up in the European Parliament featuring speakers that who are opposed to the mainstream approach to trans rights.

[Ian Wishart]

And it's obviously a very sensitive, divisive topic. We're not here to talk about transgender rights, the issue per se, but about the fact that it's become a topic in the European Parliament, which I think is. It's noteworthy that a controversial subject that's raged in the US and Britain for a number of years now has suddenly emerged as a big thing in Brussels. There's a reason why that is perhaps, and perhaps that's what we can talk about a little bit.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah, that's right, Ian. And I think it's no accident that some of these events are happening with the support of a prominent player here in Brussels, the MCC Brussels think tank that's funded by the Hungarian government. Viktor Ban has long made opposition to LGBTQI rights, including trans rights, defining feature of his politics. He's used that on the national scale and now to some extent, it's now been exported here to Brussels.

[Ian Wishart]

And I guess it's predictable that when voters across Europe vote for governments that are more conservative and further right and vote for meps that come from the further right spectrum, that those topics that are close to their heart become discussed.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah, that's right. And one of the things that has happened is that an AfD lawmaker in the European Parliament invited an Australian YouTuber known as Billboard Chris, a very vocal anti trans campaigner, to speak at the European Parliament. So when you've got these people elected into the Parliament, they end up hosting events and inviting folks to speak at those events who align with their worldview.

[Ian Wishart]

And we saw in the US in the presidential campaign that Trump's allies poured millions of dollars into that sort of anti trans messaging.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah. And in the UK we've got politicians like Liz Truss who are also pushing on a similar line. So I think it just kind of brings this debate to Brussels. It shows that it's happening here as well. Despite the fact that I think for a long time that was seen as a really fringe issue that Brussels didn't need to concern itself with. I think people who I've spoken with around town have sort of said, oh, look, we don't engage with, with that sort of thing.

[Ian Wishart]

People in Brussels have often thought they're above those sorts of issues, haven't they?

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah. And now what we're seeing is that those issues are increasingly visible on the EU stage and that's got groups that monitor hate and extremism worried. We've got some groups who've spoken with Murray who've said they're concerned that anti trans rhetoric is becoming more visible, more normalized, more mainstream. And. And they're concerned that now this might actually become even more inflamed in Brussels.

[Ian Wishart]

Well, yeah, Mary included this in her EU Influence newsletter, which comes out every Thursday. So if you're interested in these sort of topics, you can sign up to that. And broader news story is on our website this morning, folks.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

We're going to try a little experiment. This is a new podcast you may know, and we'd like to give you a little taste of a few other headlines that are coming online this morning so that you might get a sense of the news. So first up, we've got a really big story this morning out on politico.eu where we're talking about how Emmanuel Macron, the French President, is trying to far right proof the French establishment and he's appointing certain key allies to posts ahead of this 2027 election to try to ensure that his legacy is not destroyed. So that one's out on the homepage this morning in.

[Ian Wishart]

Yeah, and the other one is about the meeting of finance ministers we were going to mention, weren't we?

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah, that's right. It's the Ecofin. And they're going to be talking about the MFF, the EU's long term budget, among other things, also about the war on Ukraine. But the MFF is kind of going to be the interesting point of conversation as we get into the nitty gritty of budget negotiations. And finally, our third topic of the day is bringing British artists back to the eu.

[Ian Wishart]

Brexit never goes away, does it?

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

It's your favorite. I hear you eat Brexit for breakfast.

[Ian Wishart]

It's very tasty, but it's past its sell by date. Some people would say, yeah, like the.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Milk in my fridge. All right, so what's happening is that we've got this delegation of MEPs from the European Parliament's Culture Committee and they're in London this week and they're discussing essentially touring bands.

[Ian Wishart]

Yeah, because when Brexit happened, it hit musicians in the UK quite hard because they suddenly found that they couldn't just come to the continent of Europe to do gigs without filling in loads of paperwork, applying for visas and that kind of thing. And at the time of the Brexit negotiations, a lot of musicians complained about this, saying that it was tantamount to like ending their careers, really. Do you remember Elton John getting in on the debate? He called the government at the time, I think it was 2020 or 2021. He called them philistines because of this. But there were a number of really famous musicians who got involved.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah, and it's not just musicians, it's actors too. You know, you've got touring stage companies that can't come to Europe without filling in forms. And you and I both know that form filling out is not the forte of the creative classes like.

[Ian Wishart]

Speak for yourself.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

I just had a battle with trying to sign up for a mutuality.

[Ian Wishart]

Ian, let's not go down that road, shall we?

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Let's not. Right, so it's not the big stars like Ed Sheeran and so forth. I hear he's.

[Ian Wishart]

And it's certainly not the big stars in terms of politicians either. It's some members of the European Parliament in London. And I think this shows that this is only the start of the argument. And actually it's going to get to a point where the government and the European Commission are going to have to get involved before anything changes. And it's a long way from that happening.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah. And until then, we're going to have to be bereft of our British actors and musicians. But it's not just that that we're talking about here. These MEPs are also talking about Erasmus. Plus it's that mobility and education program.

[Ian Wishart]

There was an agreement in December for the UK to rejoin the Erasmus scheme and that was something that was quite controversial when wasn't included in the original Brexit deal in 2021.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah, that's right, Ian. And it'll just cost London a cool 570 million pounds.

[Ian Wishart]

I think that shows really that this Starmer government, Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of Britain, is really trying to bring the UK back towards the eu. Whether that's been prompted by his own convictions or by the current geopolitical situation, which is forcing the UK back towards the eu. Could be both of those things. But I think it shows, doesn't it, that there's something happening here?

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Yeah, definitely. And we are talking more and more about this EU UK reset, with the US on one side, China on the other, and Europe and the UK looking for friends in old places. So this is one to watch, Ian, before we go, I just wanted to raise one super important point for those of us who are uncaffeinated and alarmed by the price of coffee. In Brussels, our colleague Gabriel Gavin went to Bouche.

[Ian Wishart]

It's that fancy.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

I know he's a fancy boy and he went to Bush in Schumann. And as of this week, they've raised their prices. Guess how much for a coffee now? I dread to think it's €5.20, Ian.

[Ian Wishart]

Well, I'm sure the commission officials can. Can afford that on their massive salaries.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Oh, yeah, that's a harsh characterization of our commission friends. But, yeah, look, what they're saying is that coffee bean prices are high, operating costs are higher.

[Ian Wishart]

Well, Belgium is cutting its VAT, I think, from March, from 21% down to 12%. So perhaps we'll get a little nice little spring bonus.

[Zoya Shevdolovic]

Oh, man, this is news I can use. All right, listeners, if you'd like to tell me where to find a cheaper coffee, please send me a WhatsApp. You'll find the number in our show notes. And that's it for today. Speak to you tomorrow, Ian.

[Ian Wishart]

See you tomorrow.

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