Dutch,
Spanish far-right parties to join Orbán’s Patriots for Europe
Hungarian
leader needs only one more national party for his right-wing alliance to
qualify as an official grouping in the European Parliament.
JULY 6, 2024
11:39 AM CET
BY KARL
MATHIESEN
The leaders
of the Dutch and Spanish far-right parties plan to join the new right-wing
alliance being formed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The moves
would leave Orbán on the brink of gaining enough members to form an official
new group on the far right of the European Parliament — and potentially saps
the power of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has lost members of her
own grouping to Orbán’s Patriots for Europe.
The
Netherlands’ Geert Wilders said Friday he wanted his Party for Freedom to join
the Patriots for Europe group, to “protect our Judeo-Christian heritage. And
our families.”
Spain’s Vox
leader, Santiago Abascal, told La Gaceta that his party would also join Orbán’s
alliance, withdrawing from Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists.
Abascal then
sent an apologetic message on social media to Meloni, expressing a “personal,
political and moral bond” and promising to continue to work toward “a common
historical project.”
Under the
Parliament’s rules, an official grouping requires 23 MEPs from seven countries.
Formal groupings of parties gain financial and procedural advantages.
Orbán has
fulfilled the first requirement, with 37 MEPs. And with nationalist,
anti-immigration parties from Hungary, Austria, Portugal and the Czech
Republic, now joined by groups from Spain and the Netherlands, he needs only
one more national party to cross the line.
Orbán has so
far been rebuffed by Poland’s Law and Justice. But the FT reported on Friday
that France’s National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen’s party, was also in talks to
join Orbán’s alliance.
The shifting
alliances on the fractured far right come after a European election in June in
which a Meloni’s group became the third largest in the Parliament, while the
more extreme Identity and Democracy (ID) group came fifth. If Le Pen’s 30 MEPs
join Orbán’s group, it would it would leave ID without enough members to
survive.
Overall,
nationalist parties now command a significant wing of the Parliament, but so
far they have demonstrated little coordination.
In his
message, Wilders added that he wanted to “support” Ukraine. Orbán scandalized
EU leaders on Friday by visiting Moscow to hold talks with Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
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