09/06/2026
A revealing new profile in POLITICO of Marieke Ehlers, the chief whip of the Patriots for Europe, has laid bare what The Good Lobby has been documenting for months: the European People’s Party’s cooperation with the far right is the fruit of a deliberate and concerted effort, and not accidental as often depicted by the EPP. The EPP has long maintained that there is no structured alliance or formal quid pro quo with the Patriots. Ehlers – who is arguably the most important operational figure in Europe’s largest far-right group – proved that stance unfounded.
“If they think people believe that, they are extremely naïve,” she told POLITICO.
Her account of the deportations bill that passed through the LIBE committee in March is particularly telling. According to Ehlers, EPP negotiators were not simply accepting convenient votes from the right; they were actively dependent on them. The EPP “were literally waiting for me to give the green light from the Patriots that each and every one of our delegations would support because we needed every single vote,” she said.
This is not the language of coincidental alignment. This is vote-counting, coordination, and mutual dependency, exactly what our EU Far-Right Tracker has been mapping since November 2025.
Since we launched the EU Far-Right Tracker, we have recorded over 20 instances of the EPP voting alongside far-right groups to deliver legislative outcomes – from gutting green rules through the Omnibus I package, to blocking the EU Ethics Body, to delaying the Anti-Deforestation Regulation, to the deportations bill itself. The tracker was built precisely because denials like the EPP’s needed to be answered with evidence. The POLITICO profile of Ehlers is a significant piece of that evidence, not from a civil society watchdog, but from the far right’s own chief whip.
A Long-Term Project, Not Just Tactical Votes
What makes the Ehlers interview particularly significant is the candour about strategy and ambition. The Patriots did not stumble into cooperation with the EPP; they planned it. And her vision does not stop at the current parliamentary term. Ehlers is explicit that she hopes a right-wing coalition will eventually lead not just the Parliament, but the Council and Commission and use that position to roll back EU competencies. She believes the 2029 elections could be the turning point. This is a long-term strategy to reshape European institutions from within, and it is being enabled, vote by vote, by the mainstream centre-right.
As we set out in our guide To Engage or Not to Engage with the Far Right?, civil society faces a radically changed political landscape. The dismantling of the cordon sanitaire is not a slow drift; it is an active, coordinated process, acknowledged openly by those doing it. The EU Far-Right Tracker exists to ensure this process is visible. Denials from EPP spokespeople cannot be taken at face value when the Patriots’ own chief whip describes in detail how the coordination works. Transparency is a precondition for accountability, and accountability is what we are here to support. We will keep tracking. See the full record here.