- A bit late this time, let's take a brief look 👀 at what happened in Parliament in January! Choosing what to highlight here was not easy - many more interesting votes: howtheyvote.eu 🗳️
- Most discussed vote by far was sending the MERCOSUR trade deal to the ECJ. Extremely tight vote (10 vote majority), more than 10 pro votes from all groups. Except PfE, ESN and The Left, all groups considerable split, mostly along country lines. 🇵🇱 & 🇫🇷 exclusively voted in favor. howtheyvote.eu/183884
- This seems to not necessarily mean that the deal is off the table as we await the courts decision ⏳ - we might see provisional application back in Parliament sooner. 👀Feb 5, 2026 00:37
- Another interesting fact about the move to the ECJ: Despite that passing, a motion with a similar goal, authored by the far-right and voted on earlier, did not secure the necessary majority. Relevant esp. for all "firewall" discussions (re)sparked by this event... howtheyvote.eu/votes/183885
- Much discussed ahead of the session was on a vote that actually did not happen - a planned vote regarding the tariff-deal between the EU 🇪🇺 and the US 🇺🇸 was taken off the agenda on short notice. Rumor has it, that we might see votes on this relationship in the February plenary next week...
- An ongoing trend on display multiple times throughout this session: ESN finds itself disagreeing even with the other (far-) right groups: They voted overwhelmingly against a bill that aims to increase the availability of medicinal products... howtheyvote.eu/votes/183050
- ...after their own motion to reject that proposal outright failed with only 7% support. howtheyvote.eu/votes/183244
- With votes against only from the Greens and The Left (except most 🇮🇹 Left MEPs), Parliament gave consent to an agreement that allows FRONTEX, the "Border and Coast Guard" Agency, to operate in Bosnia and Herzegovina. howtheyvote.eu/votes/183058
- Parliament also expressed solidarity with the protesters in Iran howtheyvote.eu/votes/184027, and condemned the conviction of pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong howtheyvote.eu/votes/184067.
- For both the resolution on the protests in Iran, as well as the conviction of Jimmy Lai, nearly no one dared to actively vote against these - disapproval was mostly expressed with abstentions.
- Closing remarks: We experiment a bit with this format of "recaps" and there's much more than fits in a thread each month... 💭 If you have thoughts regarding content, length,... of these - DMs are always open (for anything else as well of course)! 💌 See you next week for the February Session. 👀
