Europe’s Right-Wing Leaders Vow to Cooperate; Take Steps to Build “Big European Force”

Several European conservative leaders met in Warsaw, Poland on December 3 and 4 to form a new political group in the EU Parliament, AP News reports. Among the attendees were figures such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, Polish Minister Jarosław Kaczyński, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and leader of Spain’s VOX party, Santiago Abascal. Notably absent was Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s Lega, which released a statement saying that “the time needs to be right” for the new group.

While the meeting didn’t deliver in terms of formalizing a new alliance, all parties involved did vow to align their votes on sovereignty and immigration issues in the European Parliament. In a joint statement, they rejected the notion of “a Europe governed by a self-appointed elite” and said that “only the sovereign institutions of the states have full democratic legitimacy.” The participants “also discussed closer cooperation of their respective parties in the European Parliament,” the statement read.

Le Pen, while campaigning as a candidate for France’s presidential election in April, said the meeting in Warsaw had been “an important step” and participants had “undertaken to hold regular meetings in order to ensure joint voting between the two groups,” adding that “this is an advance that suits me very well and allows me to be optimistic for the future.”

Le Pen also expressed hopes of eventually forming a single group in the European Parliament which would be the second-biggest force after the centre-right European People’s Party. She said that such an alliance was “all the more necessary now that we are faced with a German coalition which has made federalism a priority and will definitely also increase migration pressure.”

Party leaders agreed to meet at least every two months at the European Parliament, while another meeting is planned in Spain in two months “to continue to move forward on strengthening and creating that big European force,” Le Pen said.

It is not the first time such an endeavour was conceived. In an effort to build a new European alliance, on April 1 Orbán hosted Morawiecki and Salvini in Budapest, a meeting which didn’t bring immediate agreement. Orbán has long envisioned a “European democratic right that offers a home to European citizens who do not want migrants, who do not want multiculturalism, who have not descended into LGBTQ lunacy, who defend Europe’s Christian traditions, who respect the sovereignty of nations, and who see their nations not as part of their past, but as part of their future.”