Tory MEPs keep matchmaking watch

Date: 06/04/06

The leader of the UK Conservatives in the European Parliament is chaperoning a representative of the national party leader David Cameron to ensure that he does not strike up deals with unsuitable parties to form a new group in the assembly.

Timothy Kirkhope, leader of the 25-strong group of UK Conservative MEPs, is accompanying shadow foreign secretary William Hague on visits to parties to see if they might be interested in joining a new centre-right Parliamentary group, such as a recent trip to Warsaw to meet the leader of the Justice and Law (PiS) governing party.

When David Cameron was elected UK Conservative Party leader in December 2005, he announced that he would withdraw the Tories from the EPP-ED group, which they joined in 1992, in protest at the group's majority support for the EU constitution and greater European integration.

But Cameron is reported to have made leaving the EPP-ED conditional on being able to form a group with a substantial number of MEPs. Hardline Eurosceptic deputy Daniel Hannan, a leading advocate of quitting the EPP-ED, has told Cameron that it would be possible to form a new group with 60-65 members, making it the fourth largest group after the centre-right EPP-ED, the Socialists and the Liberals.

The Tories have approached the Polish PiS party which has ten MEPs in the Union for Europe of the Nations (UEN) group. Following contacts between Hague and PiS President Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Poles were said to be "open" to joining a new group. But EPP sources believe that the PiS opposition to gay and women's rights as well as their tendency to economic nationalism would make co-operation difficult if not impossible with Cameron's new Tory party, which would be economically liberal and socially tolerant.

Edward McMillan-Scott, a former Conservative delegation leader in the European Parliament, who is strongly opposed to taking the Tories out of the EPP-ED, said: "How can you present yourself as moving to the centre at home when you are moving to the fringes in Europe?"

Hague has also contacted the Czech ODS party of President Václav Klaus but it will not make a decision until after the Czech elections in June this year. One EPP-ED source said that the ODS were "happy" with the advantages of being in the Parliament's largest group and doubted they would want to leave.

Members of a party that might join the new group, the Latvian LNNK, currently also part of UEN, will be presented at a UK Conservative party event in Manchester this weekend.

Leaders of other mainstream centre-right parties such as Germany's Angela Merkel have warned Cameron that they will cut off bilateral contacts with him if he carries out his threat to take the Tories out of the group. French centre-right MEP Alain Lamoussoure said in Rome that the parties with whom Cameron was considering forming a new group were "not the sort of people you want to get to know".

At the European People's Party Congress in Rome last week (30 March), Secretary-General Antonio Lopez-Isturiz said that British Conservatives who "oppose our principles and values are welcome to leave us" while "those who share our views of Europe [should] remain confident that you are part of our family".

Article reports on attempts of the UK's Conservative Party to find allies across the Europe Union for the founding of a new Eurosceptic group at the European Parliament.

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