Several of Europe’s most prominent far-right leaders are meeting in Madrid as part of a new party grouping that has been given impetus by the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
The gathering of the Patriots for Europe (PfE) will be held under the slogan “Make Europe Great Again”. The PfE brings together right-wing populists such as France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Spain’s Santiago Abascal, the leader of the Vox party, who will host the event as the group’s president.
Attendees are due to meet on Friday, ahead of a rally with supporters in a hotel on Saturday.
José Antonio Fúster, spokesman for Vox, said PfE “represents millions of Europeans who want common sense to return to European institutions, so that they serve Europeans and work for a strong, prosperous, safe Europe that conserves its identity”.
He described the party as “an alternative to the coalition of [the European People’s Party] and Socialists in Brussels, to their climate change fanaticism and to their policies of open doors to mass immigration”.
PfE is currently the third-biggest group in the European Parliament. It was created after the June 2024 EU elections by Orban, of the Fidesz party, former Czech prime minister Andrej Babis, of Ano 2011, and Herbert Kickl, of Austria’s Freedom Party.
Since then, several more parties have joined, including Portugal’s Chega, Vox, France’s National Rally and Italy’s League.
PfE’s slogan for the event suggests it has plenty in common with the agenda of Mr Trump and some of those gathering in Madrid were invited to the US president’s inauguration, including Mr Abascal, Mr Orban, Mr Kickl and André Ventura of Chega. Ms Le Pen did not receive an invitation to Washington.
Mr Orban celebrated Mr Trump’s return to the White House by describing him as a “patriotic, peace-loving, migration-rejecting, family-oriented president”. In Spain, Mr Abascal said it was “the patriots’ moment” and he also upbraided conservative politician Esteban González Pons for labelling the US president an “orange ogre”.
A PfE delegation recently travelled to Washington to meet with what it called “key players” and representatives of institutions.
“The new presidency in the United States must remind us that the countries of the European Union must take their destiny back into their own hands,” said a statement by the group, which also invoked the “necessary fight against wokism and all the actors who are destroying our identity”.
It added: “Just as Americans have sent a clear message that they want to Make America Great Again, we on our side of the Atlantic must Make Europe Great Again.”
Mr Orban, who has been governing Hungary without interruption since 2010, is the only member of PfE who is leading his country. However, after the failure of Austria’s conservatives and social democrats to form a new government, Mr Kickl has been tasked with attempting to do so. In the Czech Republic, Mr Babis is leading polls ahead of an October election, while Ms Le Pen is tipped by many to win a presidential ballot due in 2027, although her ambitions could be hindered by her trial for embezzlement.
In Spain, Vox is the third-biggest party in parliament, still some distance behind the governing Socialist Party and the main opposition conservatives. However, a recent poll showed that a quarter of Spanish men under the age of 26 believe that, in certain circumstances, authoritarian government is preferable to democracy.
“We are reaping what we have sowed by telling people for 20 years that they are going to be worse off than their parents,” said political commentator Antón Losada, of the recent rise of the far right. “That creates fear and uncertainty and it triggers a desire to return to the past.”
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