“More distant than close. “ This is how the spokesperson for the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS), Radoslaw Fogiel, called the prospect of creating a common group of nationalist parties in the European Parliament. The ruling Conservative National Party in Warsaw hosted a conference on Saturday 4 December bringing together thirteen sovereignist and far-right parties from the EU, including the Hungarian Fidesz, the Spanish Vox, the Austrian FPÖ and the Rassemblement French national.
If the presence of Marine le Pen was particularly noticed, the absence of the head of the Italian League, Matteo Salvini, who canceled his visit at the last moment, was just as much. He was however, with the Polish Prime Ministers Mateusz Morawiecki and Hungarian Viktor Orban, one of the three “sponsors” of the joint declaration signed five months earlier by about fifteen far-right parties and European sovereignists, supposed to lay the first stone of ‘a “great alliance in the European Parliament”. The three men had spoken again by videoconference in early November.
Two days before the Warsaw summit, the creation of such a group had been announced by Hungarian media, but quickly denied by PiS MEPs. Matteo Salvini, who supports the government headed by Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, has decided to boycott the Warsaw summit against a background of deep disagreement with Jaroslaw Kaczynski. On the one hand, the PiS would like the group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) to be enlarged, while Mr Salvini would opt for the creation of a new political initiative. 1er December, the ECR group confirmed that PiS MEP Ryszard Legutko was re-elected as its vice-president.
The result: the Warsaw conference led to a joint declaration that was very general in substance and concise in form – barely five paragraphs – denouncing in particular “The arbitrary application of European law, the circumvention, even the violation of treaties” by the European institutions, the latter not being able to “To be the tool of social engineering aimed at creating a new European nation”. “Closer cooperation” in the European Parliament between these parties was only mentioned in one sentence.
A new scarecrow: the German coalition
“There is no one blocking this large group, it is quite simply a very complicated political engineering, commented on the sidelines of the Marine le Pen meeting. It’s easier to create a large group of zero than to merge two. As for the German AfD, I regret that the moderate current has lost. It is difficult to envisage cooperation with the current AfD, which is far too radical. ” The German far-right party was not invited to Warsaw.
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