The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) party met in Madrid on Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 May for the ‘Europa Viva 24’ convention ahead of the European elections in June. As well as outlining the themes and positions it defends in its programme, the party also called for an alliance of the right.
Immigration, tourism, traditions, artificial intelligence, ecological and digital transitions were at the heart of the discussions. Organised by the Spanish far-right party Vox, the convention brought together around 10 European nationalist parties and several far-right figures. Some took part online, such as Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy and President of the ECR party, and Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, while others took part on site, such as Marine Le Pen, French MP for the Rassemblement National (RN) and Javier Milei, President of Argentina.
Mrs Meloni wants to unite the Right
In her speech, the former president of the RN, a party attached to the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy (ID) Group, stressed the points of convergence between the various nationalist parties. “If we want to reorientate the European Union, we obviously need to work on the relations we can have with each other”, Mrs Le Pen told the press on the sidelines of the convention, according to AFP. The leaders present and Mrs Le Pen made a series of attacks on the European “elites” and above all on immigration.
She sharply criticised “the Macron-von der Leyen duo”, accusing the French President and the President of the European Commission of “wanting to drag our continent into a quasi-European merger, a forced march towards a European superstate”.
However, in an interview on Monday 20 May, during the ‘Mattino Cinque News’ programme on Canale 5, Mrs Meloni reiterated her objective of uniting the European right-wing parties. “I want to try to do in Europe what we did in Italy: we brought together centre-right parties from different backgrounds and sent the left into opposition”, she said.
In her view, the majority between the European People’s Party (EPP), the Socialists (S&D) and the Liberal Party (ALDE), which governed the EU during the term that is coming to an end, is “unnatural”. “It’s a tough challenge, but I think we can meet it”, she said.
The European Green Party saw this event as confirmation of collaboration between radical right-wing parties in Europe, calling the distinction between the ECR and ID parties as “purely artificial”. In a statement published on Monday 20 May, the heads of the list Terry Reintke (German) and Bas Eickhout (Dutch) expressed their determination to fight against what they see as a threat to the progressive values of the EU.
Mrs Reintke described these parties as “two sides of the same far-right coin” and denounced the EPP’s position on an alliance with the ECR, as implied by Mrs von der Leyen, in her capacity as the EPP’s lead candidate, during the Maastricht debate on 29 April (see EUROPE 13407/9).
Bas Eickhout (Dutch), meanwhile, urged voters to support the Greens in order to protect “democracy, peace and social rights”. “(...) By voting for a member of the Green family, you can be sure that we will continue to fight against the far-right takeover. ¡No pasarán!”, he insisted. (Original version in French by Anne Damiani and Nithya Paquiry)