Talk:European Council

Membership verification

Wtih regard to Council members' membership of European political parties, I find different figures than those listed. But before I change the figures in the chart, I wanted to double check. Currently, the charts shows "EPP:11, Ind.:4, Una.:3". I personally find "EPP:10, Ind.:3, Una.:5" (the rest is the same). The number of independent politicians should be clear, as the table lists them: Cyprus, Lithuania, Romania; so that should be 3 and not 4. As for unaffiliated, I count: Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Latvia, and Slovakia. Keep in mind that we are talking about membership to European political parties and not political groups of the European parliament. Am i mistaken somewhere? Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:13, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

@Julius Schwarz: Aren’t you the one that keeps those numbers up-to-date, and indeed the one that added the numbers currently listed? Brainiac242 (talk) 11:39, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

@Brainiac242 Fair point -- and I did indeed update the figures following recent elections. Maybe the figure was off beforehand and I simply added/subtracted without fully checking, or maybe I just messed up at some point. Anyway, now I made my own local file to better keep track of the changes and I see that something is off, so I want to make sure I am not overlooking something before I make a change. Julius Schwarz (talk) 12:04, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

@Julius Schwarz: Christodoulides is a member of the EPP (https://www.epp.eu/who-we-are), so you should probably just remove the bar “Ind.” and include the other two independents as unaffiliated. Brainiac242 (talk) 14:55, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Well spotted, @Brainiac242, thank you. However, I think the difference between independent and unaffiliated remains substantiated for other members, so I think the distinction should be retained. Julius Schwarz (talk) 08:56, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

@Julius Schwarz: I just think it’s misleading to say there are two independent members when there are actually three. The difference is one independent member is affiliated to the EPP, while the other two are not affiliated to any European political party. The funny thing is, that back when we weren’t counting Christodoulides as an EPP member, and therefore it wasn’t misleading to count the independent members separately, you were actually opposed to separating independents from the unaffiliated members because “there is no such distinction from the perspective of European party membership”. Brainiac242 (talk) 14:57, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Then I guess my wisdom is greater than my memory. Thinking back about it, it is true that the concept of independent v. unaffiliated makes more sense in the context of "national party & political groups" (where you can be an independent politicians in a group, or a party member unaffiliated to a group) rather than for "national party & European party". So, point taken, if there is a consensus, we could indeed simplify. However, what we should remove is "unaffiliated", and then we have party members or independent politicians (whereby Christodoulides, from the perspective of European parties, is not independent while the other two are). Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:04, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

@Julius Schwarz: I don’t understand what you are proposing. How would you classify, for example, Robert Fico? He is certainly not an independent politician; but his party, Smer, is not affiliated to any European political party, not anymore. We don’t have to call him “unaffiliated”, if you don’t like the word. It could be something like “non-attached”. But we definitely can’t call him independent, especially because there actual independent politicians in the European Council. Some affiliated to a European political party, like Christodoulides, and some not affiliated to any of them, like Nausėda. Brainiac242 (talk) 12:27, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Well, for national parties, we call "independent" those who are not members of a national political party? Why would the same not apply when we talk about European political parties? Since the two levels are separate, why make a distinction? Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:52, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

@Julius Schwarz: Because that is the way the term “independent politician” is used across the English Wikipedia, and this article shouldn’t be the exception. Nikos Christodoulides, Gitanas Nausėda, and Nicușor Dan are referred to as independents throughout their articles, meanwhile Robert Fico and Péter Magyar are never referred to as such. The articles of Rumen Radev and Emmanuel Macron even mention that they were independents before creating their respective parties. The term is always used for politicians not belonging to any political party at the national level, never at the European level. Brainiac242 (talk) 13:54, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

Also, why wouldn’t we make a distinction between national parties and European parties? They are very different organizations. The members of the European political parties are primarily national parties, not individual politicians. Most members of the European Council aren’t individual members of any European party, they are simply affiliated to these parties because they are members of a national party that is itself a member of a European party. If they left their national parties, they would automatically leave their European parties as well. However, all of them actually are individual members of their respective national parties. Except the three independents, of course. Brainiac242 (talk) 14:01, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

I am not disputing any of the above. I just do not think it is out of place, for a chart specifically mentioning European political party membership to say that some people are independent. I see your argument and the pros and cons, but it still makes more sense to me. Agree to disagree. Meanwhile, we really should not use "non-inscrit", which directly refers to absence of belonging to a political group. "Unaffiliated" is probably more neutral, but it is also used explicitly in the context of political groups in the charts just above, so that is also confusing. Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:24, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

@Julius Schwarz: I still think using “independent” is more confusing/misleading than “unaffiliated”, but I don’t think there’s anything left for me to say. So I guess just, merge the two, call them what you think is best and, let’s see. If there are any issues, we’ll reopen this discussion. Brainiac242 (talk) 10:43, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Ok, that works for me. I will wait for a couple of days to see whether someone else want to weigh in before making the change. Julius Schwarz (talk) 17:55, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Just did the change and, actually, I now note that the two charts above (focusing on group affiliation) removed the "Ind." bar, which I think is logical, as the chart itself no longer reflects national party membership, but simply European group affiliation. Likewise, the third chart no longer reflects national party membership, but only European party membership. To me, that all makes better sense now. Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:09, 9 July 2026 (UTC)