Preparations for a new right-wing sovereigntist faction in the European Parliament (EP) are gaining momentum, with the Spanish populist party VOX announcing that it would join the nascent group, bringing with it six MEPs.
VOX leader Santiago Abascal made the announcement on Friday morning after meeting with Fidesz political director Balázs Orbán. The Spaniards are the latest European populist faction to join the grouping, following Portugal’s Chega, the Czech ANO, and the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ).
Brussels-based sources close to the VOX parliamentary party told The European Conservative on condition of anonymity that the Spaniards only entered the new ‘Patriots’ faction with a promise that the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) would be excluded.
VOX and its six MEPs have now withdrawn from Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) faction. Abascal praised the decision, saying that his party now had a ‘historic opportunity’ to defeat the far left and EU establishment. The new group plans to hold its inaugural meeting on July 8th.
An outline of greater unity between European populist parties was discussed at last May’s VIVA conference in Madrid, coming just weeks before a schism between Le Pen and the AfD over alleged German extremism.
In an interview with the Spanish press, Abascal aimed to minimise hard feelings between VOX and the Fratelli d’Italia party of Giorgia Meloni. He affirmed that the Italian prime minister would always be a “friend and ally” of VOX.
An attempt by Fidesz and the new Patriots group to poach the Polish PiS away from Meloni and the ECR failed earlier this week following a reported dispute over party positions. According to Bloomberg, the Patriots and the Identity and Democracy (ID) group are planning a joint constitutive meeting on Monday, July 8th, after the second round of the French national elections. Sources suggest the plan for ID is to rebrand under the ‘Patriots for Europe’ group. After losing Austrian FPÖ and Chega to the Patriots and independent Estonian MEP Jaak Madison to ECR, the ID group no longer meets the seven-nation criterion for a formal EP group.
The current six members of ID, in order of decreasing number of MEPs, that could potentially join the new faction, are Marine Le Pen’s French Rassemblement National (RN), the Italian Lega, the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), the Flemish Vlaams Belang, the Czech SPD, and the Danish People’s Party.
