Even though the EU liberal establishment did whatever it could to thwart the surging rightwing parties, going as far as cancelling the election in Romania, 2024 was the year where we saw the continental right become a formidable force that is fighting for power all over Europe.
Today (8), in the Spanish capital Madrid, a rally turned into a show of force of the EU parliament’s biggest rightwing bloc ‘Patriots for Europe’.
The group adopted the slogan “Make Europe Great Again”, a nod to US President Donald J. Trump’s leadership.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and France’s Marine Le Pen headlined the Madrid rally calling for ‘a 180-degree pivot’.
‘Patriots for Europe’ has become the European Parliament’s third-largest force – and it’s rising fast.
France24 reported:
“’Yesterday we were the heretics. Today we are the mainstream… We are the future’, proclaimed Orban, sharing the stage with other leading extreme-right nationalists including Dutch anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and former Czech premier Andrej Babis.
Both Orban and Le Pen hailed Trump’s ‘tornado’ as showing the way forward for the EU, which the parties had condemned in a joint statement as riven with ‘climate fanaticism’, ‘illegal immigration’ and ‘excessive regulation’.
‘We’re facing a truly global tipping point. Hurricane Trump is sweeping across the United States’, Le Pen said. ‘For its part, the European Union seems to be in a state of shock’.”
The Spanish party Vox, host of the rally, said around 2,000 people attended the event, that followed a dinner yesterday (7) for ‘Patriots…’ leaders with Kevin Roberts, head of conservative American think tank The Heritage Foundation.
Read: Liberals and Globalists Panic as Surging Right-Wingers Vie for Control of the European Union
The group has highlighted the ideological affinity between the European right and Trump – especially on immigration.
“’President Trump, to us, is like a brother in arms’, said [Netherland’s Geert] Wilders, who called for a ‘Reconquista’ of Europe, like the wars waged by Spanish Christian monarchs to retake the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim kingdoms between the eighth and 15th centuries.”
In the latest European elections, the ‘Patriots…’ won 86 of the parliament’s 720 seats.
The block even overtook the European Conservatives and Reformists group, led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which won 80 seats.
Read more: