The Strasbourg precedent
For the first time the Union puts a party’s values on trial through an administrative process. The target has made itself indefensible; the instrument will remain for everyone.
On 7 July 2026 the European Parliament activated, for the first time in the Union’s history, the procedure to verify whether a European political party complies with the values of Article 2 of the Treaty. The subject is Europe of Sovereign Nations, the formation bringing together Alternative für Deutschland, Reconquête and Roberto Vannacci’s Futuro Nazionale. The figures: 414 votes in favour, 224 against, 18 abstentions. The immediate stakes: the party’s registration and around two million euro in funding for 2026. The vote was held by secret ballot.
There are two ready-made interpretations, both inadequate. The right speaks of persecution: the reaction of those who prefer victimhood to reasoning. The left speaks of democratic hygiene finally being exercised: the satisfaction of those who never ask who will wield tomorrow the instrument they applaud today. Better to examine the mechanism, because the mechanism is what remains.
The verification is conducted by an administrative authority. Not a judge: an authority whose director sent the institutions a three-hundred-page dossier of statements, judgments and screenshots. The final decision, following the opinion of a committee of independent eminent persons, takes effect if Parliament and Council do not object — meaning that a party’s fate is ultimately decided by bodies composed of its competitors. And the request to open proceedings was approved by legislators deciding on their opponents’ funds behind the shelter of a secret ballot. Each of these three elements, taken alone, has a technical justification. Together they establish a precedent: compliance with values determined administratively, decided by rivals, without a name beside a vote.
A Union that takes years to carry out a return took a single sitting to begin defunding an opposition. Institutional speed is evidently a question of motivation.
Let there be no ambiguity: Europe of Sovereign Nations has made itself indefensible. A party that includes someone who described himself as the friendly face of Nazism and someone who theorises ethnic remigration needs no persecutors: it suffices unto itself. This is no defence of that party. It is an observation that instruments outlive their first targets, and that a serious legal order is judged by how it treats repugnant cases — because it is in repugnant cases that the rules later applied to everyone are written.
It is no coincidence that the vote split Italy’s governing majority: Forza Italia in favour, Fratelli d’Italia and Lega against. A sign that the question runs not along the usual right–left axis, but along the more serious one dividing those who look at the target from those who look at the precedent.
Three corrections would make the mechanism worthy of a Union governed by law. First: judicial determination — the ultimate decision on a European party’s registration and dissolution should belong to the Court of Justice, not to an authority subject to political veto. Second: precise definition — predetermined, public criteria for what constitutes a breach of Article 2, because values applied without defined offences become discretion. Third: an open vote — those deciding on their opponents’ funds should do so openly, before their own electors.
A Union confident in its values does not entrust them to an administrative file. It entrusts them to a judge, a written rule and a vote unafraid of its own name.
The rest is not the defence of values. It is the administration of dissent.
Essential sources
European Parliament, plenary sitting of 7 July 2026 — vote on the request for verification under Regulation (EU, Euratom) No 1141/2014 on European political parties.
Editoriale Domani, ‘European Parliament approves investigation into Vannacci and AfD’s party’ (our translation), 7 July 2026.
Sky TG24, ‘European Parliament calls for investigation into ESN’ (our translation), 8 July 2026.
il manifesto, ‘Incompatible with EU values’ (our translation), 9 July 2026.
Policy Maker, ‘Why the EU Authority is investigating AfD and Vannacci’s European party’ (our translation), 8 July 2026.
DIRE, ‘The European Parliament “investigates” Vannacci and AfD’s group’ (our translation), 9 July 2026.
Sources accessed: 11 July 2026.