Manfred Weber

Member of the European Parliament, 2004–present

Weber serves on the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. He is a substitute for the Committee on Regional Development, a member of the Delegation for relations with India, a substitute for the Delegation for relations with the countries of the Andean Community and a substitute on the Subcommittee on Human Rights. As rapporteur, he negotiated in 2008 for the European Parliament Directive on common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals (Return Directive), the first Directive in the field of home affairs to be adopted through the ordinary legislative procedure.^[4]

After his reelection in 2009 Weber became Vice-Chairman of the Group of the EPP in the European Parliament, and was responsible for setting the political strategy and the policy in the area of Justice and Home affairs.^[4]

Between 2014 and 2016, Weber was a member of the now defunct G5 group along with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Vice President Frans Timmermans, Socialist group leader Gianni Pittella and Martin Schulz, then President of the European Parliament.^[5]

In early 2017, Weber established the so-called G6, a group of parliamentary leaders including Pittella as well as Guy Verhofstadt of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), Syed Kamall of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), Ska Keller of the Greens, and Gabriele Zimmer of the European United Left–Nordic Green Left.^[5] In September 2018 he announced his candidature for the next election of the President of the European Commission, which is held in May 2019.^[6]

Role in national politics

In 2015, Bavaria's Minister President Horst Seehofer nominated Weber as one of his deputies in the office of CSU chairman, making him part of the party’s leadership. In the negotiations to form a coalition government under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel following the 2017 federal elections, he is part of the working group on European policy, led by Peter Altmaier, Alexander Dobrindt and Achim Post.

European integration

On 7 June 2014, Weber dismissed demands by British Prime Minister David Cameron to put the brakes on European integration.^[7] Weber stated that "The EU is based on an ever closer union of European peoples. That is set out in the treaties. It is not negotiable for us... We cannot sell the soul of Europe... if we grant every national parliament a veto right, Europe would come to a standstill."^[7] However, he supports Cameron’s demand that Britain, as a non-euro country, should be empowered to influence eurozone policy decisions. Also, he told The Guardian in early 2015 that the United Kingdom’s drive to freeze welfare payments for EU immigrants was justified and set an example for the rest of the union.^[8]

In July 2013, when the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) issued the Tavares Report criticizing the erosion of fundamental rights in Hungary, Weber dismissed it as a politically motivated attack on the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán by leftist parties.^[9] However in September 2018 he approved the Sargentini Report voting to trigger article 7 procedure against the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.^[10] Nethertheless as head of the group he failed in preventing a split in the European People's Party Group: 115 of its deputies voted in favour of the move, while 57 voted against, with 28 abstentions and 20 stayed away from voting.^[11]

In early 2017, Weber held that if the International Monetary Fund (IMF) insisted on debt relief for Greece, it should no longer participate in the bailout, thereby breaking ranks with his political party's official line that the program would end if the IMF pulled out.^[12]

Commenting on Britain's vote to leave the European Union, Weber said, “The British people decided to leave this union, so they will not be so comfortable, so safe, not so economically strong. That’s why we will say that it really is a very negative day.”^[13]

Relations with Russia

In a 2016 letter to Sigmar Gabriel, German economy minister, and Miguel Arias Cañete, EU energy commissioner, Weber criticized that the proposed Nord Stream 2 pipeline project would undermine the EU’s foreign and security goals by increasing dependence on Gazprom, Russia’s gas export monopoly. Rather than new supplies across the Baltic, Weber called upon the Commission to accelerate its efforts to import more gas across Turkey from the Caspian Sea, and even potentially Iran and Iraq.^[14]