Brussels, 24/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French Front National (FN) had said on 28 May - three days after the European election - that she had “no doubt” or “any concern” about the fact that she would be able to form a group in the European Parliament before 24 June, and she warned Nigel Farage, the British mischief maker from the UK Independence Party (UKIP) that he would have serious competition. She has not delivered on her words, however, as Geert Wilders from the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) announced during the evening of Monday 23 June that his negotiations with Le Pen had failed - a failure which was later confirmed by the FN. Worse still, Farage has in the meantime enticed one of the FN's MEPs (who left the FN) and been able to form his own group thanks to this former FN MEP.
The FN and PVV, which had Italy's Lega Nord, Belgium's Vlaams Belang and Austria's Freedom Party (FPÖ) alongside them, have not managed to attract other parties from two different member states. The threshold of seven nationalities is required to be able to constitute a group.
In a press release, Wilders confirmed that “we have not managed to federate seven parties”. “The Freedom Party [PVV] wants to form a parliamentary group - but not at any price”, he told news agency Reuters.
“In haste, I preferred political coherence and the safety of allies sharing the same vision as ours. This is a collective decision with Geert Wilders (PVV, Netherlands) and our friends from Austria's FPÖ. Without this requirement, the group would have been constituted yesterday. We did not want the Polish from the Congress of the New Right (KNP) after having studied its history and the statements of its president”, Le Pen told French newspaper Le Figaro. Wilders was said to be embarrassed, on Monday 23 June, by the arrival of a party whose president, Janusz-Korwin Mikke, openly challenged the existence of the Holocaust.
The members of these formations will currently continue to sit among the “non-attached”, even if Le Pen has again told the French press that she would form a short-term group - which is permitted by the European rules as a group can be formed at any time.
Nevertheless, the far-Right formations gathered around Le Pen and Wilders failed to meet the deadline of midnight on 23 June for the constitutive session of the European Parliament - which will be held in Strasbourg at the beginning of July. This is a decisive session which enables groups to be seated and members to be allocated to committees. This is a power struggle in which these far-Right formations will not take part - nor, indeed, will Wilders, who announced on Twitter at midday that he was saying “bye bye” to Brussels in order to return to the Dutch Parliament. (SP)