There was great news today when we read that far-right Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders failed to form a European Parliamentary group called the European Alliance for Freedom (EAF)., reports the euobserver.
After the gains that the far-right made in the Euro elections of May, Migrant Tales welcomes Le Pen’s and Wilders’ failure to form the EAF as the best piece of news in a long time.
National Front’s secretary general, Florian Philippot, played down on the Independent that it “would not real really be a disaster” but “an embarrassment” if the EAF didn’t materialize.
Far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen is all smiles until Tuesday, when her group failed to form a European parliamentary group. Read full story here.
Writes the Guardian: “The plans of Europe’s extreme right to try sabotage the EU from within were hit…failed to gain enough allies to qualify as a single caucus in the new European parliament – denying them precious funding, speaking time and committee positions.”
While the EAF was able to muster at least 25 MEPs, it wasn’t able to get seven countries as required to form a caucus. The five parties that were in Le Pen’s group were including the National Front: Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), FPÖ of Austria, Italy’s Lega Nord, and Belgium Flemish separatist Vlaams Belang.
A sixth possible candidate, Poland’s Congress of the New Right (KNP), was cited but the views of its leader, Janusz Korwin-Mikke were too extreme even for Wilders.
One of Korwin-Mikke’s aims is to deprive women voting rights.
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s of the UKIP announced that it has formed a new anti-EU Europe of Freedom of Democracy group with 48 MEPs from 7 countries led by the UKIP (23 MEPs) and Movimento 5 Stelle of Italy (17).
Two far-right Sweden Democrat MEPs were admitted into the group.