— Rob Jetten’s prominence
Rob Jetten was absent from the congress due to political challenges at home, but he was still its main focus. With D66’s recent election success in October, the Dutch prime minister represented the optimism Europeans were seeking after numerous electoral defeats, earning him the ALDE’s Liberal of the Year accolade.
His campaign against the far right, centered on positive messaging and promises for a promising future, became the main subject in Vienna. “We’re liberals because we believe change is possible,” Jetten expressed in a video message. “Authoritarians can sell fear, populists can sell anger, but we liberals can offer progress … the kind that makes people’s lives safer, freer, and more prosperous.”
Jetten’s success also boosted the socially liberal faction, viewing liberalism as more than just free markets, with an equal focus on civil rights, climate initiatives, and progressive social policies. D66, the U.K. Liberal Democrats, and Progressive Slovakia secured vice presidencies, while Belgium’s liberals, supported by the party’s traditional market-oriented faction, did not succeed. MEP Svenja Hahn was reelected ALDE president, but none of the passed resolutions mirrored the German FDP-led faction’s call for widespread deregulation.
— The party’s benefactors
Among numerous side events at the congress, only a select few were private and invitation-only, including two “stakeholder roundtables” that brought together senior party members and liberal MEPs with executives from companies that are also ALDE’s major corporate benefactors.
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