Some 16 national far-right parties signed a joint declaration on Friday 2 July to defend the Europe of Nations and Freedom against the creation of a European “superstate” that is said to be in the pipeline at the Conference on the Future of Europe.
Among the signatories are the Hungarian Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (which until recently was a member of the EPP - see EUROPE 12681/16), Matteo Salvini’s Italian Lega, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s Polish PiS party and Marine Le Pen’s French Rassemblement National.
According to the joint declaration, the aim is to defend national sovereignties against “radical” forces instrumentalising the European project, it says. The signatories denounce in particular a desire to transform societies culturally and religiously, not hesitating to see an “invasive social engineering” of the past at work with a “moralistic overactivity”.
And they spell out some of the points of contention, such as: the protection of Judeo-Christian culture; the family, which should - again according to the signatories - be supported against “massive” immigration. In general, they denounce attempts to circumvent consensus decision-making to create a new form of “oligarchy”.
The statement was posted on Twitter, including by the Hungarian Minister for Family Policy, Katalin Novák, who commented on the importance of feeling “at home” in a “Christian” continent.
The project of an alliance like this is not new. In 2019, Matteo Salvini tried to build an alliance of ultraconservative forces with those of the far right with an eye to the European elections (see EUROPE 12731/7). At the time, the operation was not a great success.
Before that, Marine Le Pen and the Dutchman Geert Wilders had already tried to form a new anti-EU axis on the runup to the 2014 elections (see EUROPE 10962/8). In 2004, it was Jean-Marie Le Pen who tried to form a far-right axis with his Polish, Belgian and British counterparts (see EUROPE 8697/13).
To see the letter: https://bit.ly/3xhqYre (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)