Le Pen plans for far-right Parliament group fall foul of Bossi move

By Martin Banks

Date: 29/07/04

FAR-right parties this week appeared to have failed in their bid to join forces in a new political group inside the European Parliament.

Leaders from five parties had hoped to find enough members to constitute a "European Right" group, which would assure them of more money and influence within the assembly.

The Flemish Vlaams Blok, Jean-Marie Le Pen's French Front National (FN), Jörg Haider's Austrian Freedom Party, Italy's Northern League and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) have been involved in protracted negotiations since last month's European elections.

Le Pen had predicted the formation of a "strong nationalistic movement inside the European Parliament".

However, their hopes suffered a setback when Umberto Bossi, leader of the Northern League, decided he and his three MEP colleagues would not join such a far-right group.

Bossi, Francesco Speroni, Mario Borghezio and Matteo Salvini will instead join the newly formed Independence and Democracy, the Eurosceptic group led by Dane Jens-Peter Bonde and Nigel Farage, of the UK Independence Party.

Six MEPs, from the Polish Self-Defence party of the populist firebrand Andrzej Lepper, who had been expected to join Le Pen's group, have instead chosen to remain on the non-attached benches.

Two conditions have to be met to establish a political group: it must have at least 19 members, from at least five EU countries.

The announcement by the Italian and Polish MEPs is seen as a major blow to Le Pen's hopes of forming what would have been the assembly's eighth political group.

There are now only 14 MEPs in the running: seven French MEPs from FN, three from Vlaams Blok, Freedom Party member Andreas Mölzer, Jim Allister of the DUP and Italians Alessandra Mussolini, a descendent of the Italian dictator, and Luca Romagnoli.

They are still trying to woo two non-attached Austrian Parliamentarians - Hans-Peter Martin, who hit the headlines earlier this year after exposing an alleged expenses scam by MEPs, and Karin Resetarits - as well as Peter Baco, Irena Belohorska and Sergej Kozlik, from the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS).

Hans-Peter Martin said: "I am not interested in joining this group in any shape or form and nor is my colleague, Karin Resetarits.

"We would not be interested in joining any group whose members, such as the Vlaams Blok, advocate the policies they do."

Martin is a former member of the Socialist group but was forced to leave following his allegations that some members had fiddled their expenses.

The Front National declared itself still "reasonably confident" of success even though it accepts that negotiations are proving difficult.

Parliament's new press and media director, Jose Liberato, said: "As far as I am aware, efforts to form a new far-right group have, so far, proved unsuccessful."

Bonde, an Independence and Democracy MEP, welcomed Bossi's decision to join forces with his group, saying: "We are happy to have him on board."

Bossi, in the past, has been criticized for xenophobic outbursts - he once said boatloads of illegal immigrants should be shot out of the water - and attacks on the EU, denouncing the Union as the "Soviet Union of the West".

Bossi, 62, who once talked of taking Italy's rich northern regions out of the country altogether, has been hospitalized in Switzerland since he suffered a heart attack in March.

Far-right parties appeared to have failed in their bid to join forces in a new political group inside the European Parliament, following the June 2004 election..

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