Le Pen, Meloni must ‘shepherd’ EU’s far-right out of divisions, AUR says

3 months ago 10

Though Marine Le Pen has invited Giorgia Meloni to form a grand EU far-right group, differences between right-wing nationalist parties make it unlikely, vice-president of Romania’s far-right AUR party Adrian Axinia told Euractiv, who also calls for a “strong shepherd” to unify Europe’s sovereigntist forces.

Barely a week after the far-right European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy (ID) group expelled German AfD from its ranks, Rassemblement National’s (RN) Marine Le Pen invited Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to merge with the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group.

“Now is the time to unite (…). If we succeed, we can become the second group in the European Parliament,” Le Pen told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

In April, the leader of the Polish party PiS, Mateusz Morawiecki, told Euractiv he wants to welcome Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party — currently sitting in the non-attached group — and other new delegations to expand ECR. All the while expressing interest in collaborating closely with Le Pen.

Meloni also recently expressed she seeks to unite the EU’s right-wing forces.

A group composed of ID and ECR members could reach 168 seats, according to Europe Elects’s projections for Euractiv, becoming the second biggest force in the Parliament after the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) with 182, followed by the Socialists (S&D) with 134.

“It’s a bit idealistic because there is a lot of tensions between different parties (…) each party has a bone to pick with another conservative party,” the Romanian far-right newcomer Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) vice-president, Adrian Axinia, told Euractiv.

He hopes, however, Meloni or Le Pen could be the leader the far-right needs, to settle the infighting, and unify everyone into a bigger political group, “to counterbalance all the neo-Marxist laws that have been put into motion,” in the last term.

“We need a strong shepherd,” stressed Axinia, also excluding Germany’s AfD as a potential partner.

But a grand far-right bloc composed of all of Europe’s ‘sovereignist’ forces will not be easy, as internal disagreements run deep, with AUR being the prime example.

AUR, in talks to join either ECR or ID, is currently polling second in Romania, with an expected 7 seats after June’s EU election. The party’s four pillars are faith, liberty, family, and nation. They also defend a ‘Europe of nations’.

The party also supports the controversial idea of the Romania-Moldova reunification, all under a Christian-nationalist ideology.

AUR vs Fidesz

Despite its hopes to sit in a unified far-right group, AUR has a long-standing feud with Fidesz, due to the former’s hawkish position against the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), which represents the country’s Hungarian minority located mostly in Transylvania.

According to Axinia, Fidesz has somehow paralysed AUR’s application to the ECR party, ongoing since 2021, due to Orbán’s close ties with and influence over ‘national-conservative’ forces.

He argued, though, that this has given them the chance to develop bilateral ties with parties within both ID and ECR, while affirming their closest ally is currently Poland’s PiS.

“They know that we are willing and open for dialogue to identify some common goals (…) they [Fidesz] are unwilling to have a dialogue,” he said.

Fidesz’s political director, Balázs Orbán, told Euractiv that “the European right cannot and would not want to partner with a political party that acts violently against a national minority in Transylvania”.

However, the Romanians are not the only party to have an issue with Fidesz. The Hungarians also face mounting opposition from other parties too, such as Czechia’s Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the Sweden Democrats (SD), both of which threatened to leave ECR, if Fidesz joined due to its pro-Russia stance.

AUR has tried in the last months to make itself known among the hard-right and far-right forces in the European Parliament, with bilateral relations with many of the ECR and ID parties.

Most recently, Euractiv learnt they are trying to build a coalition of far-right parties to vote against EPP’s Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s reelection, by circulating a ‘memorandum’ to gather party signatures.

“2024 is a crucial year, when the Union can be either put back on its natural tracks, or sunk deeper into a federal superstate that no longer values nations, their constitutions and their citizens,” the declaration reads.

Despite their attempts to cement their standing at the EU level, not only their ECR party membership has remained frozen since 2021, but they were also not invited to Spain’s Vox grand far-right rally on 18-19 May, attended by a wide plethora of ID and ECR members.

It remains to be seen whether Europe’s ‘national-conservative’ forces accept AUR as one of their own.

[Edited by Rajnish Singh / Aurélie Pugnet]