Lega Nord ‘no’ to Dewinter and Haider

Date: 16/12/04

A LEADING far-right political group this week poured cold water on the prospects of a new pan-European movement being formed to fight the 2009 elections to the European Parliament.

It was responding to calls by Filip Dewinter, leader of Vlaams Belang, formerly Vlaams Blok, the Flemish far-right party in Belgium, for Europe's anti-immigration parties to unite.

The coalition could include his own party, France's National Front, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Dutch New Right party and Jörg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria. Dewinter suggested that Haider could lead the movement.

Any new group in the assembly could unlock funding from the EU budget and secure other benefits, such as chairmanship of committees and more speaking time, which non-attached members do not generally enjoy.

But a deputy from Italy's Lega Nord, one of the groups Dewinter targets as a possible recruit, said there was "no chance" of it joining.

Francesco Speroni said the party's four MEPs would remain with the Eurosceptic Independence and Democracy group. He said: "We will not be joining any new group because we are perfectly happy where we are. These various groups generally agree on one issue, immigration, but are divided on several other policies."

But senior National Front MEP Bruno Gollnisch said negotiations could start early in the New Year with a view to forming such a grouping in the Parliament by the next elections.

He said: "My party already has a close relationship with some of these parties and it would be logical for us to join together and contest the next elections under a shared platform.

"There have already been some tentative negotiations and I expect that more formal talks will get off the ground after the holidays."

Gollnisch said that any new coalition could unite around the immigration issue but stressed that the parties concerned were not "against immigration as such, only current immigration policy".

Under Parliamentary rules, a group has to include members from at least five EU states to be recognized. Gollnisch does not see this as a problem as the group already has support from three - France, Belgium and Austria.

In recent years, there have been several tentative attempts by the extreme right to link up at the European level, coming to very little.

Francesco Speroni, MEP from Italy's Lega Nord, said the party's four MEPs will remain with the Eurosceptic Independence and Democracy group and do not intend to join a new pan-European movement on the far-right which is due to be formed in time for the 2009 elections to the European Parliament.