A few weeks before the European elections, the leaders of extreme right-wing parties all over Europe are multiplying the number of meetings and announcements of cooperation. On Friday, 3 May, several of them gathered in Sofia to plead, once again, for a populist and conservative tidal wave in the European Parliament.
And they're already seeing it. For the Czech Radim Fiala, co-president of the SPD, these elections will be a "referendum on EU policy". The Slovak, Ľudovít Goga, a member of Sme Rodina, is convinced that the allies of the Europe of Nations could become the "second largest force in the European Parliament".
"All over Europe, powerful and sometimes even ruling parties share our ideas. We make the same observations, share the same solutions. It is only logical that we will form an alliance for a new European harmony", said Marine Le Pen, the Frenchwoman of the Rassemblement national.
The week's announcement was mainly that of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's desire to have a European Pact on migration with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini (see EUROPE 12246/26).
"We are clearly looking for cooperation with Mr Salvini, in a form that will have to be defined", said, on Thursday 2 May in Budapest, the Hungarian leader whose party, the Fidesz, has been suspended from the European People's Party (see EUROPE 12218/8).
Mr Salvini has given himself the task of bringing together all the far-right parties in Europe in order to form the largest possible group in the European Parliament after the European elections.
He has already signed several "cooperation agreements" for a "Europe of common sense". The signatory parties express their "intention" to "join the common patriotic project that has been launched on 8 April 2019 in Milan, where Representatives of Lega, Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), Finns and the Danish People’ Party were announced to work together after the European elections of 23-26 May" (see EUROPE 12231/7).
"The Alliance will establish a political group in the European Parliament after the elections with the aim to unite the patriotic and conservative forces in the European Parliament that are at the moment split over different groups (ENF, EFDD and ECR)", it reads.
In a video broadcast on Twitter on 30 April, the vice-president of the ENF group in the European Parliament, Janice Atkinson of Britain, said that "at least thirteen Nations" had signed the Matteo Salvini cooperation agreement and hoped that after the elections, the enlarged ENF group would perhaps have fifteen different national delegations. Currently, the ENF group has 36 MEPs from eight countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom.
The co-president of the ENF group, Nicolas Bay of France, also hoped in another video for a massive entry of far-right parties into the European Parliament. Among the allies of the Europe of Nations, he mentions the Dutch of the Party for Freedom (PVV), the Flemish of the Vlaams Belang, the Slovaks of Sme Rodina, the Czechs of the SPD, the Bulgarians of Volya, but also parties currently in power such as the Italians of the Lega, the Austrians of the FPÖ and the Estonians of the EKRE party.
"This Europe of Nations, this Europe of cooperation and protection, it is not just a slogan, it is not just a name, it has become a very concrete reality, on a continental scale", he said. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)