After weeks of speculation, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has launched a new “patriotic alliance” which he hopes will become “the strongest right-wing group in European politics”.
Two weeks before a deadline to register new parliamentary groups, Mr Orban’s Fidesz party has thrown in its lot with Austria’s Freedom Party (FPO) and the ANO liberal protest movement of former Czech prime minister Andrej Babis.
Announcing the plan, Mr Orban complained that European citizens’ hopes for peace, order and development” were being snubbed by “the current Brussels elite” and their politics of “war, migration and stagnation”.
The move came just as Hungary assumed the six-month rotating presidency of the EU under the Trump-inspired slogan “make Europe great again”.
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Fidesz, which governs with a two-thirds majority in Budapest, topped the European election poll in Hungary with 45 per cent. Two years ago, after years of strife, it was expelled from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and has no grouping.
In neighbouring Austria, the FPO finished first last month with 25 per cent and hopes for a similar strong showing in parliamentary elections on September 29th. FPO leader Herbert Kickl described the new self-described patriotic alliance as “a new era of European politics”.
Meanwhile the Babis party, a self-described alliance of dissatisfied citizens, also topped the Czech European elections with 26 per cent of the vote.
Together the three parties have one seat more than necessary for a new grouping but, at its launch, the alliance was short of members from four other parties required by parliamentary rules.
On Monday, Portugal’s far-right Chega party said its two MEPs would join the new grouping. In an online video, Chega leader Andre Ventura said the new alliance would tackle the spread of “socialism, communism and globalism” at EU level.
The new alliance shuffles the deck of the European Parliament right wing, divided between the Identity and Democracy Group (ID) and the Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR).
The ECR will have to do without the Czech ANO while the ID group, without Austria’s FPO, remains dominated by Marine Le Pen’s French National Assembly (RN), Italy’s Lega and the Freedom Party (PVV) of Dutch election winner Geert Wilders.
Still short three parties, eyes shift now to Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD). Its MEPs were expelled last month from the ID grouping over corruption allegations and controversial remarks involving its European lead candidates.
After taking 15 seats in the European poll, AfD leaders have declined to be drawn on their future options though unnamed party officials told German media the party “could well imagine” joining the new Patriots of Europe group.
It may have dashed hopes of Marine Le Pen to unite the right-wing groupings under one roof to become the second-strongest grouping in the parliament. Unless the French politician and her RN, riding high after Sunday’s first-round national election win, can be convinced to come on board.
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