Christophe Castaner of Emmanuel Macron's centrist party. | Jean Philippe Ksiazek/AFP via Getty Images Macron’s En Marche, Spain’s Ciudadanos working on joint 2019 platform The two groups hope to unite ‘progressives’ in the European Parliament and fight rising populism.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche is working on an election platform with other like-minded parties, including Spain's center-right Ciudadanos, to forge a large, "progressive" force for the 2019 European Parliament election.

The effort was announced Monday at a meeting in Madrid between Christophe Castaner, En Marche’s chief executive, and José Manuel Villegas, general secretary of Ciudadanos.

“In the next months, we will continue to work, Ciudadanos with En Marche, on this common set of proposals which have common objectives,” Villegas said at a joint press conference with Castaner.

"For the last five years, we have seen a shake up of democratic balances that we thought were unshakable," Castaner said in a statement, citing the rise of populism, Brexit and recent elections in Italy.

"In the face of these changes, we, progressive forces who are viscerally attached to Europe ... we must make our voices heard," Castaner said, adding the "new project" would consist of building a Europe that is "more solid and more aware of the needs of our people."

An official from En Marche said that the platform, which is “in the process of being drafted,” is a "set of commitments which any progressive parties in Europe will converge on."

Castaner, who also met Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera, has been discussing the proposals with other EU politicians during a tour of Europe that began last week in Rome and included Italy’s former center-left Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Sandro Gozi, a former EU affairs minister. Castaner has other visits planned for this summer, but the En Marche official declined to say where he would be going. “We want to do in Europe what Macron did in France,” the official said.

Since becoming France’s president in May 2017, Macron has opted not to align his movement with the liberal ALDE grouping in the European Parliament, which shares many of his views. En Marche has almost no representation in the Parliament.

Macron instead appointed a team under Castaner, which includes Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, a former Parliament assistant, to create the largest possible pro-European list, coming together on issues from the rule of law to gender equality and media freedom.

The goal for En Marche is to either be "integrated" into the existing landscape, "or we put together something new,” Anglade told POLITICO last year.

Castaner told Spanish newspaper El País that the platform would break with the traditional left-right divide in Europe, and could lead to the creation of a new group in the Parliament. “We must avoid locking us up into a group that is already established,” he said.

The business-friendly Ciudadanos party, which emerged in 2006, is not in power in Spain, but has largely overtaken the conservatives, particularly after former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party government was toppled over a corruption scandal. In Europe, its two MEPs are affiliated with ALDE, and officials say it has no intention of pulling out.

One Ciudadanos official said that the idea of drafting common commitments with En Marche had been in the works for months, and involved “several meetings."

“We believe that all the liberal and progressive parties should fight together against populism and nationalism,” the official said. “But we want to compete for victory in 2019, and that means to work together with all the liberal and progressive forces in Europe, regardless of their political affiliation.”