Members of the ECR Group Bureau met on 16 January to discuss the priorities of this conservative group of local and regional politicians for the 2020-2025 term of office. Three main goals were flagged up for the next five years: promoting greater localism in EU decision-making, costefficiency in public services and free enterprise. These were priorities also shared and discussed with Jan Zahradil MEP, the ECR Group’s lead candidate for the position of European Commission President.

ECR Bureau Members agreed that they would pursue the principle of localism by “advocating the exercise of power at the lowest practicable level - by the individual where possible and by local or national authorities in preference to supranational bodies”. They also agreed that more eurorealism was needed in Brussels and that this could be achieved in the next term with a more decentralised system of governance and respect for the divergences among EU Member States, regions and cities.

Other priorities for the ECR Group for the next term are free enterprise and cost-efficient public services. In the words of ECR President Rob Jonkman (Alderman in Opsterland in the Netherlands): “As conservatives we are always on the side of small businesses. Our big focus is therefore on removing bottlenecks that could restrict their growth and on fostering digitalisation.”

The ECR Bureau Members also agreed to prioritise the following policy areas post 2020:

• Cohesion Policy;
• EU budget;
• Cross-border cooperation;
• European Semester;
• Energy;
• Climate change;
• Water management;
• Agriculture;
• Disaster resilience;
• Youth;
• Future of Europe;
• Integration of legal migrants and refugees;

These ECR priorities agreed on were presented to all the Group’s Members and the ECR lead candidate for president of the European Commission, Jan Zahradil MEP, on 6 February. Mr Zahradil expressed his hope that the outcome of the next European Parliament elections, scheduled for 23-26 May this year, would “produce a centre-right coalition supportive of a decentralised Europe that is advocated by the ECR Group”.