European Conservatives and Reformists Group
right-wing political group of the European Parliament
The European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR Group or simply ECR) is a national conservative, soft eurosceptic, and anti-federalist political group of the European Parliament. The ECR is the parliamentary group of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR Party) European political party, but also includes MEPs from other European parties and MEPs without European party affiliation.
Ideologically, the group is broadly eurosceptic, anti-federalist, and right-wing, with far-right factions. The stated objective of the ECR is to oppose unchecked European integration, enlargement and potential evolution of the European Union (EU) into a federal European superstate on the basis of eurorealism, and to ensure the EU does not heavily encroach on matters of state and domestic and regional decision making within EU member countries. It also advocates for stricter controls on immigration. The ECR contains factions of socially conservative, right-wing populist, liberal conservative, Christian democratic, far-right, and national conservative parties who all subscribe to an anti-federalist and a eurorealist or euro-critical stance.
The ECR promotes soft euroscepticism, as opposed to a total rejection of the existence of the EU characterised by anti-EU-ism or hard euroscepticism, by calling for democratic reform of the EU, more transparency, changes to the Eurozone and EU migration/asylum policies, and the curbing some of the EU's powers and bureaucracy whilst maintaining unrestricted free trade and cooperation between nations. Other parties and individual MEPs within the group support complete withdrawal from the block, referendums on EU membership and opposition to the Eurozone.
The ECR was founded around the Movement for European Reform following the 2009 European Parliament elections in the United Kingdom at the behest of the British Conservative Party leader David Cameron. During the tenth European Parliament, the largest party in the group by number of MEPs is Brothers of Italy (FdI), followed by Polish Law and Justice (PiS).
The public source identifies “European Conservatives and Reformists Group” as right-wing political group of the European Parliament. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around European, Conservatives and Reformists.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1345559. VIAF identifies the subject as 308289684. The Library of Congress control number is no2018101576. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “European Conservatives and Reformists Group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.