Page 32 - RusRPTAug24

32 I Central Europe bne August 2024
The Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders (pictured left) has now joined the Patriots for Europe faction co-launched by Viktor Orban (right). / bne IntelliNews
Orban’s new right-wing alliance meets legal threshold to set up faction in EP
Tamas Csonka in Budapest
The Danish People’s Party and
the Flemish Vlaams Belang
have joined the radical right- wing alliance launched by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Patriots
of Europe, which should enable the alliance to meet the legal threshold for the establishment of a new faction in EP, which requires drawing at least 23 MEPs from seven countries, local media wrote on July 6.
A day before Hungary’s rotating EU presidency began on July 1, Orban’s party Fidesz announced that it would form a caucus in the European Parliament with the populist ANO party of former Czech prime minister Andrej Babis and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) of Austria’s Herbert Kickl.
www.bne.eu
The Patriots for Europe group, as it has been named, challenges the radical- right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID), the latter of which was the erstwhile home of the FPÖ.
The creation of a third EP group to the right of the centre-right's European People's Party (EPP) demonstrates the fragmentation of the hard right and its
divisions, notably over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But it also illustrates the way that Orban, as the leader of only
a middle-sized country in the EU, has become one of its most influential leaders on the right, reconstructing the party factions in a way that puts him at the centre.
As bne Intellinews reported, the radical right-wing Hungarian prime minister has been in talks with ANO, Polish PiS,
“Hungary's nationalist leader has been trying to lure PiS from the ECR to join his alliance of Central European nationalists but was rebuffed by his ally, former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki”