STRASBOURG — A fractured European Parliament threatens to make passing laws very difficult this mandate.

The Parliament got down to work this month in Strasbourg, but with the two main political families weakened and at loggerheads over a Council deal divvying up the EU’s top jobs, cobbling together majorities won't be easy.

“The duopoly between the Socialists and conservatives is over,” said French Green MEP David Cormand. “This is an opportunity for us. Before, they were co-managing the Parliament, now, we will be able to politicize the institution.”

The European People’s Party and the Socialists & Democrats — the two old families of EU politics — saw their combined delegations fall to 336 this time around, short of a majority in the 751-seat legislature. That means a straight grand coalition between the two won’t carry enough weight to ram through new laws, unlike the last time around when the two had a combined 403 seats.

Meanwhile, the liberal Renew Europe group, which bolts French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance list to the old ALDE faction, is at 108 seats (up from 69), while the Greens will now hold a tenth of the chamber, up 23 seats on the previous Parliament.

“This Parliament will be dominated by the question of whether achieving a stable majority is possible" — Andreas Schwab, German MEP

These pro-EU groups have tried to find a common policy program, but the attempt has so far failed. That's because the four don't see eye-to-eye on how to reform the Common Agricultural Policy, the level of climate ambition and what to do about consumer protection, among other topics.

Those early signs don't bode well for cooperation over the next five years.

“This Parliament will be dominated by the question of whether achieving a stable majority is possible,” said German EPP MEP Andreas Schwab.

The new makeup of the Parliament leaves the EPP cornered. It's still the largest grouping, which makes it crucial to forming a stable majority, but it has much less freedom of action than in the previous mandate, when it could strike alliances with the S&D or with the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists.

“Before they could go to the left, to the right to form a majority, not anymore,” said Dutch Green Bas Eickhout, one of the faction's leaders.

Left-leaning alliance

Getting laws passed in plenary will require at least the EPP, S&D and Renew Europe, which together constitute a 444-vote majority. But that assumes whips can hold the line, and there are issues that deeply divide the groupings — like the Socialists on trade and the liberals on data protection and tech regulation.

The Greens also feel emboldened to push their causes harder, given how climate protection has broken through into the mainstream. Their team wants to attach sustainability criteria to trade deals and financial regulation, something that's likely to alienate conservatives.

Eickhout said it will be much harder in this mandate to get approval for new trade deals, such as the Mercosur accord between the EU and a bloc of South American countries which will need approval from the chamber.

That's a sentiment echoed in the Socialist faction, where the small French delegation aims to rally majorities against such deals.

“There is a divide [on the issue] between groups, but also inside of groups, including ours,” said Raphaël Glucksmann, a newly elected French MEP from the S&D group. “We’ll need to lead a political and cultural battle to explain that those agreements belong to a different era, and that if we really want to fight against climate change, we need to change our rationale.”

Climate is already one of the big stumbling blocks in building a four-party coalition.

“The CAP reform proposal the last Commission put forward was on a bad track and I don’t see how it can be renewed and re-put on the table" — S&D source

According to a draft document from earlier in July, seen by POLITICO, which lays out where agreements and disagreements lie, the EPP isn’t backing a push to increase the bloc’s 2030 goal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from 40 percent to 55 percent. That's something the other three groups are pushing hard.

Another major issue where the EPP clashes with the others is over what "sort of targets we should be setting" to rein in car emissions, said Chris Davies, a British liberal MEP and one of the negotiators for the Renew Europe group.

However, all four agree on the EU adopting a goal of climate neutrality by 2050, and to tighten screws on the aviation sector to cut emissions.

The negotiations are supposed to ensure that all pro-European parties have a common platform on big issues in order to act as a counterweight to a growing contingent of populist and Euroskeptic parties. The talks are also aimed at sending a signal about the legislature's priorities to the incoming Commission.

Despite the lack of agreement, Davies called for talks to continue as "a common position without the EPP is not a common position."

With a four-party agreement a distant prospect, non-EPP parties will have the edge on green issues in some of the biggest committees.

Take the transport, environment and industry committees. There, the S&D, Renew Europe, the Greens and the left-wing European United Left-Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group together form narrow majorities. If they manage to stick together, they will be able to push files through committee against the EPP. But nothing is guaranteed, and it's unclear how well Renew Europe fits with the more left-wing parties.

On many issues, party groups fracture into national or regional blocs — something that happened in the final months of the last mandate with contentious reforms to copyright rules and new legislation regulating how truckers move around the EU.

Marian-Jean Marinescu, a veteran Romanian conservative who lobbied hard to vote down the trucker files, thinks the legislative machine could easily get clogged again. “It will be very difficult to make majorities in the Parliament,” he said.

Kathleen Van Brempt, a Belgian Socialist returning for her third term, said that while Renew Europe is ambitious on climate and sustainability issues, it is also internally divided on social and economic policies.

“I don’t know where the majority will fall on that,” she said.

Divide and rule

The CAP reforms are expected to be a slog in the new Parliament, with a real prospect of becoming buried in amendments — or even being rejected outright by MEPs.

Contentious issues range from a proposed €100,000 cap on farmers’ direct payments to a new delivery model, in which EU countries would devise their own national strategic plans — including environmental schemes — for review in Brussels.

“With regard to the future of agriculture, there are new approaches that insist on priorities such as environmental protection and consumer needs, and put the farmers on the second level,” said Romanian EPP MEP Daniel Buda. “This can create disastrous consequences in terms of price volatility and food security.”

From the other side of the chamber, an S&D source said: “The CAP reform proposal the last Commission put forward was on a bad track and I don’t see how it can be renewed and re-put on the table. The Commission will have to change it, to adapt it to the new landscape.”

One spur to unity could be an effort by the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) grouping to claim the chairmanship of the powerful committee.

That's going to require a shift of positions. “The S&Ds and the Greens will ask for a greener CAP,” one Renew Europe source said. “If we want to reach agreement with them, we will have to modulate our positions.”

EPP officials that POLITICO spoke to conceded that the new legislature will be difficult, but said alliances will differ according to the policy issues. With no right to launch legislation itself, the legislature will have to wait on what it's served by the Commission.

On data protection, MEPs working on the topic reckon the EPP could cleave off some of the liberals. In the previous mandate, a report on a piece of legislation securing the privacy of online communications was narrowly agreed by a center-left majority backed by some liberals and the left-wing GUE/NGL group.

The text is poised to head back to the Parliament, raising the question of how the liberals will respond this time in a new assembly where the GUE/NGL group lost 11 members, pushing them down to a 41-strong faction.

“The e-Privacy regulation was voted against the EPP [in the last mandate], will there still be a majority against tracking walls?” wondered the newly elected German Pirate MEP Patrick Breyer, referring to websites blocking users who won’t agree to be tracked online.

Brexit relief

There are some signs of stability ahead. If the U.K. delegation leaves at the end of October, the hemicycle will lose 73 British lawmakers, including a rancorous 29-strong contingent from the Brexit Party, the legislature's largest single force.

This will offer the chamber a “rare chance to reshape itself” as some seats are reallocated across the bloc, said Andrew Duff, a former liberal lawmaker who’s now president of the Spinelli Group, which backs a federalist vision of the EU.