A game-changing alliance led by French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is aiming to redraw the European political map.

Macron and Rutte have reached a tentative agreement, along with other prime ministers from the liberal camp, to unite Macron’s La République En Marche! movement with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) for next year’s European Parliament elections, party operatives involved in the discussions told POLITICO.

Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) is a core member of ALDE, which is the predominant liberal political family  in Europe, and the Dutch prime minister has emerged as a centrist, liberal powerbroker on the European Council in the wake of Brexit. Macron upended the French political establishment by catapulting into the Elysée Palace as an independent in 2017.

The new progressive coalition would challenge the conservatives, who have long dominated Brussels and shake up calculations of who will lay claim to the top EU posts, all of which will be up for grabs next year.

Operatives who described the plan said the parties in the coalition would campaign around a common platform, but that the partnership would formally take effect after next May’s European Parliament election. They hope they will do well enough to form the second-largest group in the Parliament — giving its leaders additional leverage in both the backroom negotiations over filling EU leadership posts and stronger numbers in the vote for Commission president, which will require a majority in the soon-to-be 705-seat Parliament. The center-right European People’s Party is expected to win the most seats in the next chamber.

The planned coalition, confirmed by officials in Paris, the Hague and Brussels, aims to bottle the political lightning of Europe’s most prominent up-and-coming leaders. Each defeated a populist right-wing, anti-EU opponent in national elections — Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen in France. It also could force a generational shift by ousting former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt from his decade-long leadership of ALDE in the European Parliament.

“We are prepared to move ahead with Macron and En Marche, to create the second-biggest force in the European Parliament,” said an official close to Rutte.

“An entity with Macron is in the pipeline,” said Pavel Telička, a Czech MEP and an ALDE vice president.

The partnership, which could ultimately lead to a renaming of ALDE but is initially seen as a joint venture rather than a single, new political party, will be further discussed at a meeting of liberal party leaders in Brussels next week, ahead of an EU  leaders’ summit that starts Wednesday.

Virtually from the moment of his election in May 2017, Macron has kept politicians across Europe guessing about what, if any, alliance he would form in an effort to wield more influence over EU politics.

Until now, a major obstacle to a deal with ALDE has been Verhofstadt. He is widely regarded as one of the most eloquent pro-EU voices, but at age 65 is also seen as part of a generation of old-boy politicians. The group includes Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who is 63, and Parliament President Antonio Tajani, who is 65, whose tight grip on the EU leadership has often seemed to make party affiliation less relevant than membership in their insular club.

The partnership between ALDE and En Marche would overcome this by potentially forcing him out after the election. It would also be boosted by an alliance that Macron has forged with the Spanish liberal leader Albert Rivera and his party Ciudadanos. And it would present a bold, new challenge to the long-dominant, center-right European People’s Party (EPP), which currently holds the most seats in the Parliament and all three of the EU’s top jobs — the presidencies of the Commission, the Council and the Parliament.

New leverage in filling top EU posts

The EPP is still widely expected to remain, as now, the top party in Parliament next year, and under the EU’s Spitzenkandidat or “lead candidate” process, that would give the conservatives an inside track on claiming the Commission presidency. Under the Spitzenkandidat system, the European Council is expected to nominate the candidate of the party winning the most seats.

But the leaders on the Council have already said they aren’t bound by the process, which they say would strip away their authority under the EU treaties to nominate a candidate for confirmation by a majority of Parliament. And ALDE has expressed resistance to the Spitzenkandidat system, noting that it stands to overwhelmingly benefit the EPP.

So far, no prominent ALDE officials have stepped forward to declare their candidacies for the party’s nomination, unlike in the EPP, or in the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), currently the second-biggest group in Parliament, which both have competitive primary campaigns under way.

ALDE is poised to hold eight of the 27 seats on the European Council — the same number as the EPP — giving the Liberals substantial muscle among the EU heads of state and government, and potentially improving their chances of clinching the Commission presidency provided the Council ignores the Spitzenkandidat system.

The Macron-Rutte alliance also stands to partly offset the influence of Germany, the EU’s biggest, richest and most powerful member country, which often exerts the strongest influence over who will hold the top EU leadership posts — especially at a time when Chancellor Angela Merkel is viewed as having an increasingly shaky grip on her coalition back home.

While Rutte is viewed as a potential candidate for the Council presidency, his growing role as a continental powerbroker may create additional incentive for him to remain in The Hague, and that would give him — and the Netherlands — more leverage in deciding how to fill other posts.

By treaty, the EU is required to seek geographic and political balance in filling top posts — and Rutte could seek advantage on both fronts.

Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans, a former Dutch foreign minister, has declared his candidacy for the Party of European Socialists (PES) Spitzenkandidat nomination, but is widely believed to be interested in becoming the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs — a potentially plum post for the Netherlands. He would need the support of Rutte’s government, and while Timmermans is not a member of the ruling VVD, he is highly regarded throughout the Dutch government.

For Rutte, such a move could deliver a win-win, increasing Dutch influence in EU foreign affairs and defense policy and potentially fostering greater cooperation with the Socialists in Parliament.

Macron, meanwhile, has long been interested in the EU’s Danish competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, who is a member of ALDE, as a potential candidate for Commission president. Vestager, age 50 and a woman, would fit nicely with Macron’s push for a generational shift in the EU’s upper ranks.

The Hof Factor

Talk of an alliance between Macron and ALDE has gripped Brussels, and rippled across the Continent for months. But it has long been complicated by Verhofstadt, the longtime leader of the ALDE group in Parliament and its candidate for Commission president in 2014, who has worked frantically to come up with scenarios that would allow him to hold on to a position of power, and keep alive his hopes of becoming Parliament president.

Asked about Verhofstadt’s potential role in the new partnership, the official close to Rutte said: “What position? There will be no position.”

While Verhofstadt continues to view himself as potentially instrumental to a deal, many others in ALDE, both in the Parliament and in national parties, have viewed him as an obstacle — not just to the alliance but to the rise of the liberals as the party of a new generation of European leaders.

Within ALDE, Verhofstadt has also long been viewed as overly preoccupied with his own self-interest. In recent years, he has racked up a series of high-profile political blunders, including a failed gambit to win the Parliament presidency by forming an alliance with the populist Italian 5Star Movement. Members of ALDE rejected the plan and Verhofstadt lost the Parliament contest to Tajani.

Verhofstadt cannot block the emerging coalition. But he has also refused to relinquish leadership of the group in Parliament and there has never been sufficient consensus among ALDE’s disparate rank-and-file to oust him. His critics now see his departure as inevitable given that the election of a new Parliament also requires formation of new groups, and the election of new group leaders.

“He is part of this old boy’s network in the Parliament that just divvies up the jobs between them and is mostly interested in preserving their own position in power almost at any cost,” said an MEP who spoke on the condition of anonymity and closely follows the dynamics with ALDE. “Verhofstadt will be here until the elections, so he is someone to deal with whether you like it or not… Nobody can fire him, at least until the elections. He is someone with a position that matters in this game. After that,  he may not get re-elected as group leader. He may not get appointed as parliament president. He may not get anything. But until that he is here.”

When — or if — Verhofstadt will accept his inevitable fate remains uncertain and a concern for liberals who still wants his help during the upcoming campaign. “He is a scorched earth player. He doesn’t care about anything but his own position,” the MEP said.

Party officials said Verhofstadt continues to try to negotiate a future role for himself. He has formed what one official called “a little group” within the ALDE parliamentary group, led by Dutch MEP Sophie In’t Veld, dedicated to working on the group’s future.  And Verhofstadt has been pushing an idea that ALDE would put forward a “slate” of potential Spitzenkandidat nominees rather than selecting just one candidate at its party congress, which will be held in Madrid in November.

“Nobody understands what that means,” a second MEP said, adding that Verhofstadt had appeared to come up with the idea to please Macron. Both Macron and Rutte have expressed their dislike for the Spitzenkandidat process, and share a view that the Council should retain its discretion over whom to nominate for Commission president.

Who you calling liberal?

Macron, for his part, seems less focused on getting rid of Verhofstadt than on getting rid of the word “liberal” from the name of any future party that might be created out of his alliance with Rutte, as the word carries heavily negative connotations in French politics. Some officials said that rebranding could be accomplished around the “progressive” label, or perhaps a “Team Europe” moniker, in the spirit of Macron’s proposal to replicate his national success with a “Europe En Marche!”

Several ALDE party insiders and officials told POLITICO that the the Liberals are set to change, reform or dissolve the current ALDE group after the 2019 election, once the alliance with Macron is formalized.

“Either the group no longer exists, or you change the name so you keep the legal entity,” the second MEP said. “We will have to make a decision.”

An En Marche official said “we have the intention to come up with something new, and most likely a group.” The official added that the focus is on new parties that are outside the Parliament. “We don’t want a better version of ALDE or an ALDE with a new look.”

ALDE has struggled in part because its membership includes an extremely broad political spectrum, from ardent federalists like Verhofstadt, to Euroskeptic populists like Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. ALDE’s eight Spanish MEPs alone represent four different national parties, as well as include three independents.

The joint venture between Rutte, 51, and Macron, 40, seems designed to bring new cohesion, under a pro-EU banner. Already ALDE has some of Europe’s most prominent young leaders in its ranks, including Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, 45, and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, 42.

Two ALDE officials confirmed that Rutte, as well as other liberal leaders like Bettel and Finish Prime Minister Juha Sipilä have agreed with Macron to work on an alliance of liberals at the political level.

One official also confirmed that the Spanish party Ciudadanos, “is playing a key role.” Rivera, the leader of Ciudadanos, has been working on an election platform with En Marche to forge a large, “progressive” force for the 2019 European Parliament election.

Whatever it’s called — liberal, progressive or merely pro-EU — party officials said the result would be a centrist juggernaut, well-positioned to advance the agenda, and the careers, of its two main architects, Macron and Rutte, to the extent at least that they can find common ground. Rutte and Macron still do not see eye to eye for instance on many eurozone policies. But that’s governing, and first there’s politics to deal with.