Czech conservative leader rejects EU alliance with radical forces, seeks deal with EPP

3 months ago 15

There will be no alliance with radical forces in the European Parliament, said Czech Prime Minister and leader of the Civic Democrats (ODS/ECR) Petr Fiala, adding that his conservative EU group should seek cooperation with the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), which maintained its dominance in the European Parliament.

Following the European elections, in which the far right made significant gains and more than 50 newly elected MEPs across Europe remained independent at the European level, Fiala stressed the need to maintain the original conservative values of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) when recruiting new members.

“If there are further shifts, we have to consider what we will do. For me, being in the same group as radical political forces is unacceptable,” he told Czech journalists on Monday.

Fiala also stressed that the ECR should cooperate with the European People’s Party (EPP), which remains the largest group in the European Parliament after the European elections on Sunday.

Fiala’s ODS was one of the founding parties of the ECR, and during the European election campaign, he repeatedly stressed that the ODS’s aim was to fight populists and extremists.

This stance led ODS MEPs to oppose the membership of the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in the ECR because of its pro-Russian stance. Conversely, they did not oppose the admission of MEPs from Eric Zemmour’s far-right Reconquête party.

In the recent elections, the ODS won three seats in the European Parliament, while its coalition partners TOP 09 and KDU-ČSL, which belong to the EPP, won three seats between them.

The party spokesman also confirmed to Czech media that ODS representatives had not yet travelled to Brussels to negotiate the future of the conservative group in the European Parliament.

(Aneta Zachová | Euractiv.cz)