Former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told the European media outlet Politico on Thursday 27 June that his party Law and Justice (PiS) was exploring creating a Central Eastern European grouping in the European Parliament.
Mr Morawiecki is therefore examining the idea of quitting the alliance with the Fratelli d'Italia party, chaired by the President of the Italian Council, Giorgia Meloni. The European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) in the European Parliament, to which both parties currently belong, was due to formally elect its Chairman on Wednesday 26 June. It has ultimately postponed its inaugural meeting until Wednesday 3 July (see EUROPE 13440/17).
“It’s quite obvious that we could be united on a geographical platform and not an ideological platform. I’m less and less interested in all those ideological elements of the jigsaw”, Mr Morawiecki told Politico.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s party Fidesz, which refused to join the ECR because of the presence of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), could join this group (see EUROPE 13436/28), as could Andrej Babiš's Action of Dissatisfied Citizens in the Czech Republic and Janez Janša’s Slovenian Democratic Party.
However, the Polish news agency PAP reported that PiS had reached a compromise with Fratelli d'Italia to divide up the management positions within the group. With 83 members (see EUROPE 13435/7), the group currently occupies third place in the European Parliament. (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)