Viktor Orban’s Alliance Meets Threshold to Form Political Group in European Parliament

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban leaves at the end of a two-day European Union summit at the European Council building in Brussels on June 25, 2021. (Olivier Matthys/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

The new “Patriots for Europe” right-wing alliance, founded by Hungarian conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has met the threshold to form an official political group in the European Parliament, with Italy’s populist party led by Matteo Salvini the latest to join.

Patriots for Europe, which seeks to cut immigration and shift power from Brussels to national governments, on July 6 secured membership of the right-wing Danish People’s Party and the similarly leaning Flemish Vlaams Belang, meeting the required threshold. The minimum requirement to form a political group in the assembly is 23 members of the European Parliament from seven countries.

On July 8, Mr. Salvini announced that his League party had joined Patriots for Europe, and it appears that the French National Rally party led by Marine Le Pen may join.

“Patriots for Europe continues to grow,” Zoltan Kovacs, Mr. Orban’s spokesman, said on July 8 in two separate, nearly identical posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, in which he noted that the new grouping stands to become the third-biggest force in the European Parliament, behind the conservative European People’s Party and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.

Mr. Kovacs noted in one post that Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally party had joined the Patriots for Europe group, adding 30 of its members of the European Parliament to the grouping. Ms. Le Pen has yet to confirm the news.

In a second post, Mr. Orban’s spokesperson said Mr. Salvini’s League had joined, adding eight European Parliament lawmakers to the mix.

Mr. Salvini said in a post on X that he expects the new grouping to be a significant force for change in Europe’s often left-leaning political landscape.

“Today, after long work, the large Patriots group is born, together with the League in Brussels, which will be decisive in changing the future of Europe,” he wrote.

With the addition of Mr. Salvini’s lawmakers—and potentially Ms. Le Pen’s—to Mr. Orban’s grouping, Patriots for Europe is on track to overtake Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists.

Mr. Orban first announced his intention to form the Patriots for Europe political movement at a June 30 news conference in Vienna, promising to help usher in “a new era” that “will change European politics” and shift Brussels to the right.

The Hungarian leader traveled to Vienna to present the Patriots for Europe alliance of his Fidesz party alongside Austria’s Freedom Party, led by Herbert Kickl, and former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s ANO party. Mr. Orban made the announcement one day before Hungary took over the European Union’s rotating presidency for six months.

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.”

Five other parties—Dutch anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom, Portugal’s right-wing Chega party, Spain’s Vox party, the Danish People’s Party, and Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang—subsequently joined. They were followed on July 8 by Mr. Salvini’s party and, potentially, Ms. Le Pen’s party.