Marine Le
Pen’s party in talks to join Viktor Orbán’s group in European parliament
Rassemblement
National will decide whether to link up with Patriots for Europe on Monday
French
far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán could
team up in the European parliament
Andy Bounds
in Brussels, Leila Abboud in Paris and Paola Tamma and Marton Dunai in
BudapestJULY 6 2024
https://www.ft.com/content/40595c42-7942-40e6-a381-bcbc1119b7b6
France’s
Rassemblement National is in talks to join a new group with Hungary’s Viktor
Orbán in the European parliament as far-right parties are jostling to convert
their votes into power.
The RN,
which is forecast to win the most seats in Sunday’s French legislative
elections, will decide whether to ally with the Patriots for Europe group on
Monday, three people familiar with the situation told the Financial Times.
Orbán’s
Patriots group on Saturday gained its seventh member party, meeting the
threshold to form an official faction under the EU parliament’s rules.
If the RN
joins with its 30 MEPs, the Patriots are likely to overtake the right-wing
European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) to become the third-largest group
in parliament.
Vox, the
Spanish hard-right party that counts six MEPs, quit ECR for the Patriots on
Friday. The Freedom party of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and the Danish
People’s party, which have seven MEPs between them, also said they would join
the Patriots.
The ECR,
dominated by Italian PM Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, relegated the
Renew group built around Emmanuel Macron’s centrists into fourth position last
month, but has now dropped to 78 members. Renew has 76 members.
But the
proliferation of right-wing groups also means their dreams of a super-merger
that would wield significant power in the EU assembly appear to be over.
“Anything
that furthers the interests of Patriots in the EU parliament is good for us.
Orbán is a fine politician who has the skills to operate at the EU level,” said
one RN official.
Zoltán
Kóvacs, Orbán’s spokesman, told journalists to “stay alert in the next few
days”.
Alternative
for Germany leader Alice Weidel, whose MEPs were expelled from the outgoing
Identity and Democracy group dominated by the RN, told the FT last week she was
also seeking to form a group — potentially based on the remains of ID.
But it
remains unclear whether the AfD will manage to secure MEPs from enough
countries, given that four parties have now left ID for the Patriots.
Russia is
the main dividing line between the Patriots and AfD on the one hand, and the
ECR on the other. Meloni is a strong defender of Ukraine, while Orbán, Le Pen
and Weidel have traditionally held more pro-Moscow views.
The
Hungarian leader met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday,
causing outcry among EU leaders who said he did not represent them, just after
he made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday.
On Wednesday
the Russian foreign ministry posted on social media what appeared to be a
congratulatory message for the RN, featuring a photo of Le Pen celebrating her
first-round victory.
“The people
of France are seeking a sovereign foreign policy that serves their national
interests and a break from the dictate of Washington and Brussels,” said the
post.
Le Pen, who
has long tried to counter criticism that she is too pro-Russia, criticised the
post on TF1 news on Thursday. “I absolutely do not feel responsible for Russian
provocations towards France,” she said, adding it was “a form of interference”.
However,
Orbán said earlier this week he was confident the Patriots group would grow
“faster than anyone thinks now” after the second round of the French elections.
“You will
see . . . those who promised to join and create
a pan-European faction, the third largest, then the second largest. Later we
will attempt to be the largest but that won’t be this year.”
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He will
combine his group’s power in parliament with his country having just taken the
six-month rotating presidency of the bloc, which allows his ministers to set
the agenda of meetings.
The
centre-right European People’s party is the largest in the 720-strong
parliament with 188 members, followed by the centre-left Socialists and
Democrats, with 136. Party size dictates how many coveted positions such as
committee chairs and vice-presidents they get.
However,
MEPs still vote on the positions, and the pro-European majority, including
Renew, the Greens and other parties, operates a “cordon sanitaire” to reject
any far-right candidates. They also voted to divvy up committee chairmanships
based on group size on July 4, before the Patriots are constituted.
The ECR
secured one committee chair and one vice-president during the last term because
they came from its more moderate parties.
“No one
beyond the cordon sanitaire can chair a committee,” senior Socialist MEP Alex
Agius Saliba told the FT.
But János
Bóka, Hungary’s Europe minister, told journalists that there would be “an
institutionally and politically strengthened right in the European parliament
and in an ideal world, this should be reflected in the distribution of
positions”.
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