The decision of the European People's Party to admit 20 MEPs from Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Europa, poached from the FF/Gaullist Union for Europe, has not gone down well with the smaller parties in the EPP, notably FG.
Worried that it represents a drift to the right towards Euroscepticism and away from a federal Europe based on a social market, eight parties have formed a caucus within the EPP, the Athena Group, to organise the fight-back. It includes FG and Christian Democrats from the Benelux countries, Italy, Catalonia, and the Basque country, and last week in Brussels it made John Bruton president.
His speech was a radical defence of the European federal vision and remarkable for its explicit criticism of the preGerman election backsliding of fellow German Christian Democrats whose leader, Helmut Kohl, was the architect of the Forza defections. Consequently, relations between Bruton and Kohl are nacht gut!