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Votes against the group’s line

All roll calls · 1 Jan 2025 – 31 Dec 2025 · Verena MERTENS

Which members voted against their group’s clear line, how often compared with the votes where the group had one, and did they vote with their national party when they did?

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Period Term202420252026Last 6 months
Custom dates
Votes Final votes293All roll calls2 891
Order Highest rate firstBy name

Showing Verena MERTENS only. Show every member

Verena MERTENS’s votes against the line, 32

Every vote in the selection where the member’s position differed from their group’s clear line, newest first.

Position: the member’s vote. Clear line: the position of at least two thirds of Group (at least 10 members voting), the group they sat in on that day.
DateVotePositionClear lineGroup
27 Nov 2025Paragraph 60 — part 2 EU strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities post-2024AgainstForEPP
27 Nov 2025Paragraph 23 — part 2 EU strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities post-2024AbstainedForEPP
27 Nov 2025Paragraph 18 — part 2 EU strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities post-2024AbstainedForEPP
27 Nov 2025Paragraph 17 — part 3 EU strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities post-2024AgainstForEPP
25 Nov 2025Final vote — text as a whole 2024 budget: assessing the implementation of the gender mainstreaming methodology in the EU budgetAgainstForEPP
9 Oct 2025Final vote — text as a whole Second World Summit for Social DevelopmentAgainstForEPP
9 Oct 2025Final vote on the provisional agreement Establishment and functioning of European Works Councils - effective enforcementAbstainedForEPP
10 Sept 2025Final vote — text as a whole Role of cohesion policy investment in resolving the current housing crisisAgainstForEPP
17 Jun 2025Amendment 186 to Article 3, after paragraph 2 Combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child sexual abuse material and replacing Council Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA (recast)AgainstForEPP
3 Apr 2025Amendment 15, adding text after recital 4 Amending Directives (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760 as regards the dates from which Member States are to apply certain corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirementsAbstainedAgainstEPP
3 Apr 2025Amendment 14, adding text after recital 2 Amending Directives (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760 as regards the dates from which Member States are to apply certain corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirementsAbstainedAgainstEPP
3 Apr 2025Amendment 13, adding text after recital 2 Amending Directives (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760 as regards the dates from which Member States are to apply certain corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirementsAbstainedAgainstEPP
3 Apr 2025Amendment 12 to recital 2 Amending Directives (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760 as regards the dates from which Member States are to apply certain corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirementsAbstainedAgainstEPP
3 Apr 2025Amendment 17 to Article 2 Directive 2024/1760 (UE) Article 37, point 1 Amending Directives (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760 as regards the dates from which Member States are to apply certain corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirementsAbstainedAgainstEPP
3 Apr 2025Amendment 16 to Article 1, paragraph 1, point 1 Directive 2022/2464 (UE) Article 5, point 2 Amending Directives (EU) 2022/2464 and (EU) 2024/1760 as regards the dates from which Member States are to apply certain corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirementsAbstainedAgainstEPP
3 Apr 2025Amendment 1, adding text after paragraph 1 Immediate risk of further repression by Lukashenka’s regime in Belarus - threats from the Investigative CommitteeAgainstForEPP
3 Apr 2025Amendment 11 to paragraph 2 Estimates of revenue and expenditure for the financial year 2026 – Section I – European ParliamentForAgainstEPP
2 Apr 2025Amendment 70, adding text after recital R — part 2 Human rights and democracy in the world and the European Union’s policy on the matter – annual report 2024ForAgainstEPP
2 Apr 2025Amendment 148 to paragraph 143 Implementation of the common security and defence policy – annual report 2024AbstainedForEPP
2 Apr 2025Amendment 146 to paragraph 125 Implementation of the common security and defence policy – annual report 2024AbstainedForEPP
2 Apr 2025Amendment 159 to paragraph 41 Implementation of the common foreign and security policy – annual report 2024AbstainedAgainstEPP
2 Apr 2025Amendment 147 to paragraph 4, after indent 8 Implementation of the common foreign and security policy – annual report 2024AbstainedAgainstEPP
2 Apr 2025Amendment 145 to paragraph 4, indent 7 Implementation of the common foreign and security policy – annual report 2024AbstainedAgainstEPP
2 Apr 2025Amendment 65, adding text after paragraph 22 Guidelines for the 2026 budget – Section IIIAbstainedForEPP
2 Apr 2025Amendment 64 to paragraph 22 Guidelines for the 2026 budget – Section IIIAbstainedForEPP
1 Apr 2025Amendment 34 to Article 1, paragraph 1 Macro-financial assistance to EgyptForAgainstEPP
12 Mar 2025Paragraph 70 — part 2 White paper on the future of European defenceAgainstForEPP
12 Mar 2025Final vote — text as a whole European Semester for economic policy coordination: employment and social priorities for 2025AbstainedForEPP
13 Feb 2025Amendment 1, adding text after paragraph 4 Continuing detention and risk of the death penalty for individuals in Nigeria charged with blasphemy, notably the case of Yahaya Sharif-AminuAgainstForEPP
13 Feb 2025Amendment 1 to paragraph 9 Repression by the Ortega-Murillo regime in Nicaragua, targeting human rights defenders, political opponents and religious communities in particularAbstainedForEPP
10 Feb 2025Wednesday’s agenda — Request by the ESN Group Final vote Wednesday’s agenda – Request by the ESN GroupAbstainedAgainstEPP
23 Jan 2025Amendment 2, adding text after paragraph 4 Systematic repression of human rights in Iran, notably the cases of Pakhshan Azizi and Wrisha Moradi, and the taking of EU citizens as hostagesForAgainstEPP

By member, 1

Members with at least one vote where their group had a clear line. Order: by rate, for members with at least 300 clear-line votes (the rest follow by name) — not a ranking.

Against the line: votes against the group’s clear line ÷ clear-line votes (votes where the member’s group at the date had a clear line and the member voted); a count below 50. Of the votes against: opposite (for ↔ against), abstained against the line, other (for or against when the line was to abstain), and with own party — with the majority of their national party’s members in the group (at least two voting).
MemberAgainst the lineClear-line votesOppositeAbstainedOtherWith own party
Verena MERTENS , EPP · Germany 1.3 %2 3711319014

About these figures

What was counted, what was left out, and how.

  • 2 891 votes considered (all roll-call votes matching the filters; scope).
  • 78 of 371 decisions in the period had no final vote recorded by name (a show of hands or a count without names) and cannot be measured.
  • A vote counts against the group’s line when the group’s clear line — at least two thirds of its votes cast, with at least 10 members voting — was different from the member’s position; a divided group has no line to vote against (method). This is a different rule from group loyalty, which uses the majority line (loyalty).
  • Ordered by rate, only members with at least 300 votes where their group had a clear line are compared; fewer votes make a rate unstable, and below 50 the figure is shown as a count.
  • Each member is counted in the group they belonged to on the day of the vote (group at the date).
  • Roll calls are not a random sample: final votes on laws are recorded by name, most other roll calls because a group asked for it. A group’s line is inferred from its members’ votes; the Parliament publishes no whip.
  • Methods: Voted against the group’s clear line v1, Voted with the group’s majority line v1, Final votes and all roll calls v1, Group at the date of the vote v1.
  • Data as of 29 Sept 2026, 03:29 UTC (data stamp 2b7a29b98b0d, code 6d4005c55bde; what the stamp is).
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Sources & citation

Where the facts on this page come from, and how to cite it.

Permalink
https://news.eu-parl.st-solutions.dev/analysis/dissent?from=2025-01-01&mep=256974&to=2025-12-31
Data source
Licensed CC BY 4.0.
Data version
data version 2b7a29b98b0d (29 Sept 2026) · methods: group-at-date v1, participation v1, abstention v1, loyalty v1, against-clear v1, cohesion v1, agreement v1, group-agreement v1, winning-side v1, similar-votes v1, scope v1, data-version v1 · methods
Retrieved
29 September 2026

Cite as

EU Parl Watch Research (2026). “Votes against the group’s line — All roll calls · 1 Jan 2025 – 31 Dec 2025 · Verena MERTENS”. Analysis. EU Parl Watch Research. https://news.eu-parl.st-solutions.dev/analysis/dissent?from=2025-01-01&mep=256974&to=2025-12-31 (retrieved 29 September 2026). Data: European Parliament Open Data, https://data.europarl.europa.eu/ (CC BY 4.0); data version 2b7a29b98b0d (29 Sept 2026) · methods: group-at-date v1, participation v1, abstention v1, loyalty v1, against-clear v1, cohesion v1, agreement v1, group-agreement v1, winning-side v1, similar-votes v1, scope v1, data-version v1.
BibTeX 
@misc{epw-analysis-2026-09-29,
  author = {{EU Parl Watch Research}},
  title = {{Votes against the group’s line — All roll calls · 1 Jan 2025 – 31 Dec 2025 · Verena MERTENS}},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://news.eu-parl.st-solutions.dev/analysis/dissent?from=2025-01-01&mep=256974&to=2025-12-31}},
  url = {https://news.eu-parl.st-solutions.dev/analysis/dissent?from=2025-01-01&mep=256974&to=2025-12-31},
  urldate = {2026-09-29},
  publisher = {EU Parl Watch Research},
  note = {Analysis. Data: European Parliament Open Data (CC BY 4.0); data version 2b7a29b98b0d (29 Sept 2026) · methods: group-at-date v1, participation v1, abstention v1, loyalty v1, against-clear v1, cohesion v1, agreement v1, group-agreement v1, winning-side v1, similar-votes v1, scope v1, data-version v1}
}