MEPs bid to neuter far-right group

Liberal and Socialist MEPs want to make it harder to form political groups in future to prevent a repeat of the creation of a new far-right faction in the European Parliament.

Graham Watson, leader of the ALDE group, said: "It’s too easy to form a group." He said that the next term of the Parliament from 2009 should be an occasion to reduce the number of groups, currently eight, to improve the coherence of Parliament. The current threshold for setting up a group is 20 MEPs from six countries.

On 15 January French Front National MEP Bruno Gollnisch launched a new group called Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty made up of seven French Front National members, five Romanians, three Belgian Vlaams Belang MEPs, two Italians including the grand-daughter of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, Alessandra, ex-UK Independence Party MEP Ashley Mote, one Bulgarian and a member of Austria’s Freedom Party.

Socialist MEPs also want to raise the threshold to reflect the EU having 27 states. Parliament officials said that there was support for raising the number of MEPs to 40 and the number of countries to eight. But this would mean the end of the Independence and Democracy group and could cause problems for the Greens/European Free Alliance, the Union for Europe of the Nations and the European United Left-Nordic Green Left group, all of which have just over 40 members.

Liberal and Socialist MEPs want to make it harder to form political groups in future to prevent a repeat of the creation of a new far-right faction in the European Parliament.