FRANCE: PM Lecornu Confirms Failure Of State Budget Joint Committee Talks

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The Conference of Presidents (the heads of the political groups in the European Parliament) holds a meeting at 16:00CET (10:00ET, 15:00GMT) intended to discuss how to cut down on the use of secret ballots in plenary session votes. Making secret ballots more difficult to hold could limit the prospects of the broadly centrist coalition of groups that backed Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2024 being usurped in more votes by the 'Venezuela' coalition of centre-right, right and far-right groups. 

• Politico notes, "The far right has increasingly asked for them, enabling centrist MEPs to discreetly break with deals negotiated by their own leadership — a tactic that helped blow up the agreement to cut green reporting rules for companies, which ultimately was passed thanks to a right-wing majority."
• At present, in order to call for a secret ballot, MEPs or groups reaching the 'high threshold' of one-fifth of MEPs (144) must do so before the vote takes place. The two groups on the far-right, the Patriots for Europe (PfE, 85 seats) and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN, 27), fall short of this threshold alone. However, if the conservative European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR, 79) side with the PfE and ESN, then the 'high threshold' is met.
• In order to change a rule of procedure, the constitutional affairs committee must evaluate a proposal before putting it before the plenary session, where a majority vote is required. 

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