Brussels – The European Parliament is preparing for the third sovereignist and nationalist far-right group just two days after the formation of Patriots for Europe. It will be called ‘Europe of Sovereign Nations’ and will be led by the radical right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, with its establishment scheduled for tomorrow (July 10) in Brussels, sources inside the German party told Eunews after the statement made by Tomio Okamura, leader of the Euroskeptic, anti-Islamic, anti-immigration Czech populist party Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and co-founder of the group ready to see the light of day in the European Parliament.
At tomorrow’s meeting – the time and place of which are still not known – the other members of Europe of Sovereign Nations will be announced, with whom for weeks AfD has been weaving dense relations not to remain in the irrelevance of the non-aligned, having been expelled from the ID group in May. Forming a new parliamentary group requires at least 23 members from at least a quarter of the member states (7). So AfD (strengthened in the European elections with 15 elected members) needs eight more members from six countries. One is the Czech Ivan David of SPD, a former member of Identity and Democracy who was excluded from the Patriots for Europe group when, yesterday (July 8), ID merged into the new sovereignist formation due to opposition from the Czech party ANO 2011 of former PM Andrej Babiš, one of the three founders of the political experiment with Hungarian PM, Viktor Orbán. Also most likely to join will be the three Bulgarians of Vazrazhdane (‘Rebirth’), among the first on the eve of the June 6-9 European elections to push for a group with the Germans of AfD.
Four more MEPs from four countries are needed to reach at least 23 members. Among the candidates to join this new far-right group are the three Spaniards of Se Acabó La Fiesta (‘The Party is Over’), the Greek national-conservative Democratic Patriotic Movement – Victory (1 elected), the two Romanian irredentists and nationalist populists of S.O.S. Romania, the two Slovak neo-fascists of Republika, the six Polish ultra-nationalists of Konfederacja, and the Hungarian Our Fatherland Movement (1 elected). However, the Germans of AfD tried today to tighten contacts in Paris with Sarah Knafo, the only MEP left representing the French ultranationalist right-wing Reconquête in Brussels after the expulsion of four of the five elected MEPs (ready to form a new party, but in the meantime already part of the ECR). If all these national forces joined Europe of Sovereign Nations, the new far-right group in the European Parliament would have 35 members from 10 member countries and be the smallest behind the Left (46).
In a European right-wing camp that is increasingly divided and quarrelsome, the emergence of the third group that is more to the right than the European People’s Party means a continual scramble between conservatives, patriots, and sovereignists, including – and not only – in terms of terminology to qualify the different far-right formations. Opening the dances were the Patriots for Europe (PfE), who, on the very day of their establishment, snatched the bottom spot on the podium of the largest groups in the EU Parliament from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), with 84 and 78 members, respectively, behind the European People’s Party (188) and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (136). Compared with the Patriots for Europe group – whose first vice-chair, Hungary’s Kinga Gál (Fidesz), yesterday claimed to want to “provide a European alternative, not an alternative to Europe” -according to Czech Okamura’s words, Europe of Sovereign Nations will be “against the Green Deal, against migration, against the Islamization of Europe. We want the powers of Brussels to return to the national level,” totally abandoning the idea that it is possible to reform the European Union from within.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
