Marine
Le Pen leads gathering of EU far-right leaders in Koblenz
The
head of France’s Front National will share the stage with far-right
leaders from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands
Nicola Slawson
@nicola_slawson
Saturday 21 January
2017 12.43 GMT
The French
presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen is to headline a European
gathering of Eurosceptic and far-right leaders in Germany on Saturday
as they seek to present a united front in a year of high-stakes
elections.
Organisers of the
conference in Koblenz, billed as a “counter-summit”, said
participants would set out their joint “vision for a Europe of
freedom”.
Authorities in the
central German city are bracing for a large protest later on Saturday
by a coalition of leftwing groups, mainstream political parties and
unions. More than 1,000 police officers have been deployed to keep
the demos peaceful.
Gathering under the
banner “Koblenz stays colourful, no room for rightwing populism”,
the demonstrators say they plan to play a rendition of Beethoven’s
Ode to Joy, the EU’s anthem, outside the conference venue.
The conference has
already caused controversy after organisers banned many news
organisations from attending on the basis that they had “not met
journalistic standards in past reporting”, the German newspaper Die
Welt said.
The German
broadcaster ARD has threatened to sue over its exclusion. Its
programme director, Volker Herres, condemned what he described as a
“massive encroachment” against the freedom to report.
He said: “It is a
loss for our audience that we won’t be able to report on the
meeting of rightwing populist parties in Europe. This gathering is of
great importance for the future political course of this movement.”
Le Pen, the leader
of France’s Front National, will share the stage with Frauke Petry,
of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), Geert Wilders,
of the Dutch anti-Islam Freedom party, and Matteo Salvini, of Italy’s
anti-EU Northern League.
All are members of
the Europe of Nations and Freedom group in the European parliament,
which has 40 members from nine countries.
Wilders announced
his attendance at the conference on his Twitter feed using the
hashtag #WeWillMakeOurCountriesGreatAgain, a play on the new US
president Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America great again”.
Wilders’ party
could win the largest percentage of the vote in the Dutch
parliamentary election on 15 March. Le Pen is among the top
contenders in France’s presidential vote in April, and AfD hopes to
enter the German parliament in September.
“The aim is to
outline the Europe of tomorrow,” Le Pen told the French radio
station Classique on Friday. “Each of us is strongly attached to
sovereignty and freedom in general. I believe that is what also
brings us together is a rejection of the European Union’s
laissez-faire policies.”
She said none of the
participants could be described as extreme right, a label that she
said was used “by our adversaries to discredit us”.
Timo Lochocki, a
political analyst with the German Marshall Fund, told Agence
France-Presse the gathering was mainly “just good PR”, given that
the parties had little to gain from strengthening ties.
“This is largely
to increase media attention,” he said. “The reasons why people
vote for these parties are purely national and are independent from
any alleged cross-national cooperation between the far right.”
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