Buoyant Le Pen seeks more allies for Eurosceptic group in Brussels

 

Marine Le Pen with Matteo Salvini of Italy's Northern League (left), Harald Vilimsky of Austria's Freedom party, and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom party (right) in Brussels. Photograph: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

Buoyant Le Pen seeks more allies for Eurosceptic group in Brussels

Front National leader partners with Italian, Dutch, Austrian and Belgian parties and says she is confident of adding others

Kim Willsher in Paris and Lizzy Davies in Rome

theguardian.com, Wednesday 28 May 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/28/marine-le-pen-eurosceptic-bloc-brussels

Marine Le Pen is confident of forming a powerful Eurosceptic bloc before the first meeting of the European parliament at the beginning of July.

The Front National (FN) president appeared buoyed up and determined as she led a press conference with the leaders of four other far right parties in Brussels on Wednesday afternoon. And she had a message for Ukip's Nigel Farage, a rival in the pursuit of rightwing allies. "I'm sorry Nigel, we're going to form our own group," she said with a triumphant smile.

"We have just come out of a meeting and I can tell you absolutely no worries about the existence or the future of our group that, as you know, must be constituted by the first [parliamentary] session at the start of July," Le Pen said. "The existence of our group will be proof that a future Europe of sovereign [states] that are respectful and fraternal can exist and must exist while the Europe of technocrats and totalitarianism has had its day."

Ukip is fishing in the same political pool for alliances in its own attempt to constitute an official parliamentary group. Farage, whose previous allies could defect to Le Pen, has said he will not ally himself with the FN, claiming the French party is still riven with "antisemitism and general prejudice". His remarks sparked accusations of slander from Le Pen.

Judging by her smiles, being in Brussels – home of the institution she blames for torpedoing France's economy, impinging on its sovereignty and flooding it with immigrants – does not disagree with Le Pen. The clearly delighted FN leader fired the first salvo against Farage flanked by the presidents of the Northern League in Italy, which has five European seats, the Freedom party in the Netherlands, led by Geert Wilders, which has four seats, the Freedom party in Austria, with four seats, and its traditional ally Vlaams Belang in Belgium, which has one seat.

"You know the FN that I have the honour to represent won an historic score of 25% of votes, arriving first in 71 departments and 24,400 communes out of the 36,000 in France, allowing us to quadruple our score of 2009 and multiply by eight the number of our MEPs," she said.

"We have shown a wonderful unity of the movement and maturity of the new generation of politics that we represent. The press, the system, our adversary sought to divide us, to create splits. We have shown an united front. The great lesson of this day and our presence is this unity, the same unity that allowed us this immense victory."

Despite the bravado, however, Le Pen is still short of representatives from two more countries to form a parliamentary group. Under European rules, such a group must contain at least 25 MEPs from seven different member states. The parliamentary groups must be formed before 24 June if their members wish to obtain influential posts.

The Swedish Democrats, who have worked with the FN in the past, seem hesitant to ally themselves with the French far right, while the Danish People's party, with four seats, and the True Finns party, with two, have both refused to join Le Pen's group.

Le Pen has said she does not want to join forces with Golden Dawn in Greece (three seats), Jobbik in Hungary (three seats), or the neo-Nazi Udo Pastors of the National Democrat party in Germany (one seat). It is not known whether Poland's New Right Congress (four seats) or the Lithuanian Justice Order (two seats) have been approached by Le Pen.

French analysts said Le Pen was walking a thin line of trying to form a strong Eurosceptic bloc without joining forces with openly neo-Nazi groups.

Le Pen knows she can count on the support of Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy's rightwing, xenophobic Northern League, who is one of the French politician's most vocal supporters in Europe. Salvini's Twitter profile features a picture of him and Le Pen with the slogan: "Vote for her too."

After their meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, he posted another photograph on Facebook showing the pair smiling together at a round table. "Another Europe is possible!" he wrote. "Less immigration and finance; more work and hope."

Beppe Grillo, figurehead of the Italian anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), was on a more covert mission to meet Farage on Wednesday, as the M5S ponders how best to use its 17 new MEPs.

In the runup to the election, Grillo made clear that he would not join any form of alliance with Le Pen, but made no secret of his liking for Farage and some of Ukip's ideas. However, no decision was expected imminently after the meeting in Brussels, a spokesman in Rome told the Guardian.

The encounter was described as a chance for the two parties to "look for points in common" and "evaluate the idea" of a possible alliance. On his return to Italy, asked whether he had come to an agreement with Farage, Grillo said: "At the moment these are just probes. We are exploring."

Some in the M5S expressed doubt about the viability of such a step. Giuseppe Brescia, a Grillino MP in the national parliament, was quoted by the Corriere della Sera newspaper as saying: "Everyone is writing that Farage's is a xenophobic party. Ours is not."

Duncan McDonnell, a political scientist at the European University Institute in Florence, said he thought it was unlikely the M5S would form an alliance with Ukip, "especially if they put it to an online vote". Many of the M5S's moves are dictated by the verdict of an online network of activists and supporters.

As Le Pen spoke on Wednesday, hundreds of demonstrators held an impromptu demonstration against her outside the European parliament. Willy Decourty, the burgermeister of the Belgian capital, said no permission for the protest had been sought, but it would be "tolerated".

"Being a democrat, I can understand what has driven the organisers to suddenly mobilise for this kind of event," he said.