Jordan Bardella, who heads France’s right-wing National Rally party, will lead the new “Patriots for Europe” alliance in the European Parliament that was founded by Hungary’s conservative leader Viktor Orban, with the new coalition pledging to work on cutting immigration and shifting power from Brussels to national governments.
Founded by French politician Marine Le Pen, National Rally joined Patriots for Europe on July 8, with Mr. Bardella saying at a press conference in Brussels that the new group represents “hope for the tens of millions of citizens in the European nations who value their identity, their sovereignty and their freedom.”
On July 6, Patriots for Europe secured membership of the right-wing Danish People’s Party and the similarly leaning Flemish Vlaams Belang, meeting the required threshold to become an official political grouping in the European Parliament. The minimum requirement to form a political group in the assembly is 23 members of the European Parliament from seven countries.
With the addition on Monday of National Rally’s 30 members and eight lawmakers from Italy’s right-wing League party, the Orban-founded alliance now counts 84 members from 12 European Union (EU) countries and is the third largest political group in the European Parliament.
“As patriotic forces, we are going to work together in order to retake our institutions and reorient policies to serve our nations and peoples,” Mr. Bardella said in a statement.
The conservative European People’s Party is the biggest grouping in the European Parliament, with 188 seats, followed by the left-wing Socialists and Democrats with 136 members.
Kinga Gál of Hungary’s Fidesz party will be vice president of the Patriots for Europe alliance.
Ms. Gál said in a statement on X that being elected the First VP of the group is a “great honor” while pledging to do “everything I can to bring this joint work forward and bring results and real change.”
Mr. Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, first announced his intention to form the Patriots for Europe alliance at a June 30 news conference in Vienna. He traveled to the Austrian capital to present the Patriots for Europe concept alongside Herbert Kickl, head of Austria’s Freedom Party, and former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who leads the ANO party.
The Hungarian leader’s announcement was made one day before Hungary took over the European Union’s rotating presidency for six months, with Mr. Orban promising to help usher in “a new era” that “will change European politics” and shift Brussels to the right.
A “patriotic manifesto for a European future” that was signed by the three party leaders seeks to counter plans for “a European central state” and pledges “to prioritize sovereignty over federalism, freedom over diktats, and peace.”
“What Europeans want is three things: peace, order, and development,” Mr. Orban said through an interpreter at the June 30 event. “And what they are getting from the elite in Brussels today is war, migration, and stagnation.
“Our objective is, and we believe that this will happen, that in a short time, this will be the strongest right-wing group in the European Parliament.”
Right-wing parties from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain are all part of the new Patriots for Europe alliance.
