Brussels, 16/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - It's official. The formation of the Europe of Nations and Freedoms Group in the European Parliament from a coalition of extreme-right movements was confirmed and its composition announced by Marine Le Pen, leader of French extreme right-wing party the Front National (FN) at the Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday 16 June.
It has taken a little over a year for Le Pen to manage what she failed to do immediately after the European elections of May 2014, when she was unable to garner the 25 MEPs from at least seven member states required to be able to form a group. It is for that reason that the 23 FN MEPs have so far sat in the Parliament as non-attached.
The new extreme right-wing group will have 36 MEPs from five parties - the FN, the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), the Italian Northern League and Belgian Flemish Vlaams Belang, traditional allies of the FN. With Janice Atkinson, a British MEP who was expelled by UKIP in March and two Polish MEPs from the Congress of the New Right joining Le Pen, all the conditions for forming a political group have been met.
The cooperation agreement among these MEPs will mean that they will be entitled to more staff, more funding and more speaking time. They hope that this will help them make their views better heard, a development that immediately brought very strong reactions and concerns.
Recalling that the FN had, in 2014, said it refused to align itself with movements, some members of which were deemed disreputable, Philippe Juvin of the French delegation of the EPP Group questioned this about-face: “Today, in 2015, things seem very different. We learn that Marine Le Pen has just formed a group with two MEPs from the KNP, the Polish extreme-right party whose 'positions' were, in 2014, deemed 'incompatible with [their] values'”, he noted. He accused the FN of having “headhunted a British MEP expelled from her UKIP group following some 'inflation' of her expenses claim”.
The head of the Belgian Socialist delegation in the Parliament, Marc Tarabella said that “the political parties joining together today only have hatred in common though they are not always in agreement on what to hate. The border-free party of intolerance has been born”. Stating that “the aim of Le Pen and consorts party is to spread their message of rejection of others, of non-solidarity and, of course, of the destruction of Europe”, he promised that “we will continue to fight for European principles and values against vested interests whether they come from within or outside the European Parliament”.
There is consternation in the Greens/EFA Group. “Marine Le Pen has won another battle in forming her new political group which will have the same rights as the others within the European Parliament. The cordon sanitaire mechanism has its weaknesses as does simple posturing ranging from indignation to denial. … The traditional parties have not kept the founding promise of the EU which is lasting, shared prosperity”, regretted group leader Philippe Lamberts of Belgium.
The announcement of the formation of the Europe of Nations and Freedoms Group coincided with the annual high-level meeting between the European Commission and religious leaders to discuss the topic Living together and disagreeing well (see other article). When asked by the press to comment, the president of the Protestant Federation of France, François Clavairoly, said: “There may be reasons for disquiet with regard to Islam and secularism. This is of concern to us in France and will probably worry other countries in Europe”. Concerns echoed by the Chief Rabbi of Brussels, Albert Guigui: “Extreme-right movements must worry us because they are the exact opposite of democratic values in Europe. It is important to learn about and get to know other people”, he said, hoping for “the revelation of others as they are and not as we would like them to be”. (Aminata Niang)