France and Hungary’s far-right parties will spearhead a new political movement in the European Parliament.
The National Rally in France and Fidesz, the ruling party in Hungary, are among the twelve far-right groups who declared on Monday that they have united to establish a new bloc in the European Parliament and intend to become a significant political force.
After a month of nationwide elections across Europe, the European Parliament clearly shifted to the right as many people turned away from the pro-business liberals and pro-environment Greens. The majority is still held by mainstream center-left and center-right parties, nevertheless.
The 84 EU parliamentarians that make up the new alliance, called Patriots for Europe, will be managed by Marine Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardella. The first vice president will be Kinga Gál of Fidesz, the political party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
There are other right-wing parties from the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Latvia, and Spain. Parties can gain additional power, funding, and the opportunity to hold coveted positions on parliamentary committees by forming a group.
Both the far-right League party of Italy and the Party for Freedom of Dutch anti-immigration leader Geert Wilders have joined. After leaving Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) alliance, the far-right Vox party in Spain also joined.
For the tens of millions of people in the European countries who cherish their identity, sovereignty, and independence, Bardella stated that the Patriots “represent hope.” “To retake our institutions and reorient policies to serve our nations and peoples,” he pledged the group will work.
Senior party leaders outlined the agenda for a group that rejects having to “struggle under the diktats of the European Commission,” the EU’s formidable executive body, or having power concentrated in Brussels, the location of the organization’s principal institutions, during a press conference.
Voters, according to Gál, “are in favor of European cooperation, but not of an EU that acts beyond its competences and punishes member states for carrying out their own policies,” and they want Europe’s borders to be better safeguarded against migrants.
Despite Meloni’s ECR having 84 MPs in the 720-seat assembly, the Patriots for Europe assert that they are currently the third largest political party in the legislature. With 188 seats, the conservative European People’s Party is the largest, followed by the Democrats and Socialists with 136.
It is yet unclear if established parties would withhold their endorsement of the new group’s candidates, so preventing them from assuming prominent positions. They used the same strategy against the National Rally when it belonged to the far-right Identity and Democracy organization the previous time.
These “are ‘patriots’ in name only,” the leftist Renew organization said on X, perhaps portending things to come. The far-right has changed its name. However, their goal remains the same: to undermine European ideals. “Europe’s future will be crafted, by us, from the political center,” said Renew.
The major parties’ blocking strategies were denounced by Bardella ally Jean-Paul Garraud as “totally anti-democratic.” The “number of posts that corresponds to the millions of voters that we represent,” he told reporters, must go to the Patriots for Europe.
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