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...I’m at tony.barber@ft.com....
...But her centre-right EPP party is in pole position to retain the presidency, even if that means closer collaboration with Eurosceptic parties. And, for now, no one seems like a stronger EPP candidate....
...Russian resistance: Moscow still has options to sustain its war-ravaged economy, writes Tony Barber....
...But Orban is no Andrei Sakharov or Lyudmila Alexeyeva, as he showed in his attack on the EPP....
...tony.barber@ft.com...
...TB: “Call me Tony.” LB: “That’s OK, Prime Minister.” TB: (persistent) “Call me Tony . . . I mean, we do know each other.”...
...(FT) Brexit beef Tony Connelly of RTE reports on new frictions between the UK and EU over the post-Brexit status of Northern Ireland....
...This collective spirit is something Mr Katainen sees as distinguishing the EPP from the Socialist group, which struggled to rally its big stars in government, such as Britain’s Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder...
...At a bad tempered summit, Mr Berlusconi and Tony Blair blocked Mr Verhofstadt, while Mr Chirac vetoed Mr Patten, the official EPP nominee, arguing a commission president could not hail from a country outside...
...Jonathan Powell, former adviser to Tony Blair, calls Johnson’s move a form of “blackmail”....
...Alex Stubb failed in his bid to become the EPP lead candidate, but could easily come back into the frame in a later stage of this negotiation....
...An outright crisis for Sweden’s mainstream parties may have been avoided but Tony Barber thinks their voter base is slowly ebbing away and there's few answers forthcoming: “Sunday’s result suggests that...
...An M5S/Lega coalition would be Italy’s ‘Syriza moment‘ writes Tony Barber....
...But Manfred Weber, leader of the EPP, the largest grouping in the European Parliament, said the free movement of EU citizens was non-negotiable....
...Thus Mr Cameron was absent from important discussions in the EPP about the commission presidency....
...By pulling the Tories out of the EPP – a move he probably thought was nothing more than throwing a bit of red meat to anti-EU dogs in his party – he forced them to roam the wilder fringes of European rightwing...
...However, another way of looking at it is to note that, even before the May 2014 elections, the EPP and S&D groups were voting together 73 per cent of the time – only 7 per cent less than now....
...At the Council, Irish prime minister Enda Kenny and former Finnish prime minister Jyrki Katainen are potential EPP candidates, while two EPP foreign ministers – Sweden’s Carl Bildt and Poland’s Radoslaw...
...According to a poll published on May 7 by VoteWatch Europe, a research group, the next legislature will probably contain three political groups to the right of the EPP, with approximately 40 seats each....
...Then-UK prime minister Tony Blair fought with Mr Juncker over the EU budget in 2007, and the Luxembourger is said to have held a grudge against Britain ever since....
...Jyrki Katainen, Finnish prime minister If the EPP decides to go for someone else, Mr Katainen presents the path of least resistance....
...“If we reject the amendments, we’ll be going into the next election with a miserable little compromise,” said Gareth Epps of Reading. The hierarchy opted for loyalty and austerity....
...She has been lukewarm about David Cameron, the UK prime minister, ever since he pulled the Conservative party out of the pan-European centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), of which her Christian Democrats...
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