Meloni, Le Pen flirt with combining EU far-right
forces
Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – Europe's far-right
figureheads Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni are hinting they could join forces
following this summer's EU elections, after Le Pen's French party announced a
break with its radical German ally AfD.
Issued on:
22/05/2024 - 16:14
Modified:
22/05/2024 - 16:12
The
overtures presage a possible reconfiguration of nationalist parties' alliances
after voters decide the next European Parliament in June 6-9 elections.
Surveys
suggest the parliament's far-right groups -- currently fractured -- will win
around 37 percent of seats in the next legislative term, up from 30 percent
currently.
At a
far-right rally in Madrid on Sunday, Le Pen declared: "We are all together
in the final stretch to make June 9 a day of liberation and hope."
A day later
Meloni, prime minister of Italy since October 2022, said in a television
interview that she wanted to replicate the success of her post-fascist party at
home and "do the same thing in Europe: ally parties that are compatible
with each other in terms of vision, even with completely different
nuances".
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, like Marine Le
Pen, has strived to detoxify the image of her party to woo mainstream voters
The door to
that scenario opened wider Tuesday when Le Pen's National Rally (RN) said it
was splitting with the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The
announcement came after the AfD's lead EU candidate Maximilian Krah -- buffeted
by controversies -- told an Italian newspaper that not every member of the
Nazi's feared SS was "automatically a criminal".
"The
AfD crossed what I consider to be red lines," RN leader Jordan Bardella
told French channel LCI. He said far-right alliances in the European Parliament
would "go back to zero" after the elections.
The RN and
AfD are part of the extreme-right Identity and Democracy (ID) EU parliament
group.
The Fidesz party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor
Orban, who remains friendly with the Kremlin, is another far-right force in the
European Parliament
Meloni's
Brothers of Italy party, in contrast, sits with the far-right European
Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).
A third
hard-right force sits in the EU parliament in the form of Fidesz, the
unaffiliated party of Hungary's Kremlin-friendly Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
'Queen bees'
Analysts
say key issues divide the parliament's far-right factions.
Most
notably, the ID is sceptical of continued EU support for Ukraine's war against
Russia's invading army, while the ECR backs Kyiv in its fight.
"These
deep-seated differences seem difficult to reconcile," Pascale Joannin,
managing director at the Robert Schuman Foundation, a think tank, said in an
analysis.
But Nicolai
von Ondarza, at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs,
wrote on X that "a more fundamental change has now... become
possible" because of the RN-AfD split.
Far-right parties are predicted to pick up more seats
in the June 6-9 EU elections, but not nearly enough to control the 720-seat
European Parliament
Le Pen
could now "argue for a merger with Meloni, Orban, (the Netherlands' Geert)
Wilders & Co towards a united far-right sans the most radical part",
he said.
But von
Ondarza acknowledged that most likely, "the differences... are too
high" for that to happen.
Daniele
Albertazzi, co-director at the Centre for Britain and Europe think tank, said
on X that while it might be "logical" for Le Pen's RN to abandon the
ID and join the ECR, "she may well resent playing second fiddle to
Meloni".
"Too
many queen bees and the bee hive descends into anarchy," he said.
While Le
Pen has welcomed Meloni "opening the way" to a possible
rapprochement, she also said last year that the Italian leader "is not my
twin sister".
Le Pen is
more closely allied with Meloni's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, from
Italy's far-right League party -- a fellow ID member.
Salvini's
team posted Wednesday a photo of him meeting online with Le Pen to "take
stock of the situation ahead of the European elections, also in light of the
reflections shared yesterday on the future composition of the ID group".
'Messy' to predict
Von Ondarza
said that while the "power potential would be there" for a Le
Pen-Meloni configuration, the far-right forecast was "messy".
Eric
Maurice, policy analyst at the European Policy Centre, said he believed that
"the break isn't total" between the RN and the AfD, and that the
announcement of a split could prompt the German party to "tone down its
radical image".
A
hypothetical ID-ECR merger could create the second-biggest grouping in the
parliament, behind the conservative European People's Party (EPP) of European
Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen -- who is tipped for a second term.
Analysts say a far-right surge might tempt the EPP
grouping of European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen to adopt their
policies
But even
divided, a bolstered far right could pull the EPP in its direction, according
to Pawel Zerka, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign
Relations.
"We
cannot fully trust the EPP" not to ally with the far right, Zerka told the
European Center for Populism Studies.
© 2024 AFP
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