Brussels, 22/06/2009 (Agence Europe) - After leaving the EPP group in the European Parliament, UK Conservatives will indeed sit along with Polish PiS and Czech ODS MEPs in a new political group. This group, named the European Conservatives and Reformists, has, at this point, 55 MEPs from 8 member states, and will be the fourth largest group in the EP, behind the EPP, the PES and ALDE and ahead of the Greens. With 26 MEPs the Tories will provide the lion's hare of this group, which will also contain 15 Polish PiS (Law and Justice) MEPs, 9 Czech ODS (Civil Democratic Party) MEPs, one Hungarian MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum) MEP, one Latvian TB/LNNK (Homeland and Freedom - Latvian National Independence Movement) MEP and one Finnish Suomen Keskusta (the Finnish centrist party which is part of the ALDE group, but one MEP has decided to join the new group) MEP.
“We are very excited about this important new development in European politics,” said UK Conservative Timothy J_Kirkhope. The recently re-elected Tory leader in the EP believes that the new group will be able to put forward strong arguments for a centre/centre-right, but non-federalist future for the EU. “We already have participants from eight countries, but talks are still continuing and we believe that more will be attracted to join our ranks in the near future,” he said in a press release published on Monday 22 June. For the moment, no decision has been taken as to who will lead the Conservatives and European reformers group, those close to him have said. According to a “Declaration of Principles”, to which all members of the group subscribe, the new anti-federalist group calls for the reform of the EU in a way that respect the sovereignty of nations and concentrates on economic recovery, growth and competitiveness. British Liberal Democrat Andrew Duff immediately lambasted the heteroclite make-up of the group, in which the British Conservatives find themselves “trapped in a bizarre cabal of ultra Catholics from Poland and ultra Calvinists from the Netherlands”. Duff queried the credo of the new group and said he looked forward to seeing the common political programme of the new alliance. (A.B./transl.rt)