The high-profile National Conservatism conference will go ahead as scheduled in Brussels this morning, Tuesday, April 16th, despite repeated efforts by Brussels officials to cancel it at the last minute.
Some 600 participants are arriving this morning to hear speeches from the French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, Germany’s Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former MEP and Brexit Party founder Nigel Farage, and the previous UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, among dozens of other public figures. Tomorrow, the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and former Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki will address the conference.
The event starts at 9:00 a.m. at The Claridge venue in Brussels, after two other venues cancelled under pressure from elected local officials.
Last Friday, the Concert Noble venue which had hosted the 2022 NatCon conference cancelled this year’s event following an intervention by the Socialist Party mayor of Brussels, Philippe Close. On Monday the replacement venue, the Sofitel Brussels owned by the Accor Group, broke its written contract citing objections from people involved in the European Council who would be staying at the hotel. The mayor of Etterbeek Vincent de Wolf (MR) yesterday boasted to The Brussels Times that he was responsible for the Sofitel cancellation.
The third venue, The Claridge, was also contacted by city officials.
Conference chairman Yoram Hazony of the Edmund Burke Foundation said,
Brussels has grown fat and wealthy off the presence of EU institutions in this city. Local politicians will do anything to protect the political establishment that guarantees the gravy train. With less than two months to the heavily contested European Parliamentary elections, the last thing they want is fifty of the most prominent national conservatives in Europe making the case against the leftist-controlled EU.
