Brussels – The 5 Star Movement officially joins the ranks of the Left in the European Parliament. After six months of “mutual observation,” the 5-star delegation and the Radical Left group are removing their reservations: “Both sides have established a lasting relationship based on shared political values,” the group announced on the sidelines of the bureau meeting that made the decision unanimously.
From the Grillo-minded alliance with Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in 2014 and militancy in the eurosceptic “Europe of Democracies and Diversities” (EFD) group to five years in the wilderness of the non-members’ group from 2019 to 2024 to joining the Left group. Thus ends the 5 Star Movement’s journey from eurosceptic right-wing populism to the European Left.
Holding together the 46 MEPs from the second smallest group in the EU Parliament (the smallest being ultra-right-wing Europe for Sovereign Nations) are the battles “for fair pay and better conditions for workers, for ambitious climate action, to oppose all austerity policies, and to fight the far right and its hateful, racist, and sexist ideas that undermine peace and democracy,” writes The Left in a communication. Battles also embraced by the eight Pentastellists elected in Brussels: Giuseppe Antoci, Danilo Della Valle, Mario Furore, Carolina Morace, Valentina Palmisano, Gaetano Pedullà, Dario Tamburrano, and Pasquale Tridico.
“It will take all our determination to win these battles for social justice, human rights, sustainable development, and the fight against poverty and inequality. Our commitment to the European Parliament remains firm within the Left Group,” commented M5S delegation leader Pasquale Tridico. While the group’s two leaders, Germany’s Die Linke Martin Schirdewan and France’s La France Insoumise Manon Aubry, said they were “happy to hear that M5S will become a permanent member of the group.” Schirdewan pointed out that “over the past six months, the eight 5-Star MEPs “have been partners in our fight for workers and against the far right,” have “enthusiastically subscribed to the principles of our group’s founding documents” and have been “strong allies for a Europe that rejects austerity, promotes strong climate action, and creates the conditions for justice for workers.”
Along with the M5S delegation, the Left Group includes Mimmo Lucano and Ilaria Salis, who were elected on the Green and Left Alliance lists. Numbers in hand, Italian MEPs are the largest nationality in the group: ten, compared to nine insoumises from France. Whether they will be able to team up and impose a more Italian agenda on the group remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the 5 Star Movement delegation—after five years of being left out of the division of posts due to lack of political affiliation—has already reaped some benefits. In fact, Tridico, former president of INPS, is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Fiscal Issues (FISC) in the EU Parliament.
The 10 years of the 5 Star Movement in Brussels
From left: the then leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage, and that of the 5 Star Movement, Beppe Grillo (17 October 2014)
It was June 2014 when an overwhelming majority of M5S online voters decided to sit within the eurosceptic “Europe of Democracies and Diversities” (EFD) group. Despite the attempted and failed split of the 5-Star Movement two and a half years later to try to join the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) party, the axis with the British eurosceptic and sovereignist UKIP party remained in place until the end of the eighth legislature. After the 2019 European elections, the team of 14 MEPs elected from the ranks of the 5-Star Movement remained without a political group in the EU Parliament, given also the imminent departure from the EU institutions by the 73 British members (including 29 Brexit Party members). This difficulty did not prevent the then 5-Star Fabio Massimo Castaldo (who switched earlier this year to Action and the Renew Europe group without running again at the European elections) from being re-elected as one of the 14 vice presidents of the European Parliament in the first half of the ninth legislature as a non-member of any group.
In the years that followed, it failed to make it into a political group—a crucial issue in obtaining institutional offices and legislative files in the EU institution—neither in that of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) despite the support of Enrico Letta (then secretary of the PD), nor in that of the Greens/Ale, with the intensified dialogue in early 2023 but then frozen for over a year for the very same issues that were analyzed in more detail today by the Left Group. In the meantime, there has been a haemorrhage of MEPs, passed individually in all other groups except that of Identity and Democracy (in which the Lega sits): the number of members of the 5 Star Movement delegation has thus dropped from 14 to five members, before the return to voting on June 6–9 for the renewal of the European Parliament, the election of eight MEPs and the closing of a controversial 10-year-long political circle in Brussels.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
