MADRID — Europe’s far-right leaders huddled in Madrid on Saturday as a show of force following Donald Trump’s reelection.
Boasting about a new era of conservative governments in Europe under the motto “Make Europe Great Again,” the Patriots for Europe party, the third-largest EU political family, held its first rally since its inception after last summer’s EU election.
On the menu? Scrapping green policy, battling Islam, taking down Brussels EU governance, migration, opposing gender and family diversity, and fighting “population replacement.”
“Our friend Trump, the Trump tornado, has changed the world in just a couple of weeks. An era has ended. Today, everyone sees that we are the future,” crowed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the most senior of the leaders at the really in the Spanish capital.
“We’re facing a global tipping point,” said France’s Marine Le Pen, while celebrating that, since Trump’s inauguration, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “has all but disappeared from the screens.”
The guests, mostly Vox’s most loyal supporters and political muscle from across Spain, descended on Madrid Airport’s Marriott Conference Center to fill a 2,000-seat auditorium, armed their Dior scarfs and Barbour jackets. They came to listen to leaders including Orbán, Le Pen, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Czechia’s Andrej Babiš and Austria’s Herbert Kickl, who joined via video link as he finalizes negotiations in Vienna to become Austria’s new chancellor.
One after the other, the leaders vowed to “reconquer” Europe’s governments from Socialist, liberal and center-right forces — building an explicit parallel to Spain’s “Reconquista,” when Christian kingdoms reconquered the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rulers in the Middle Ages.
Following his landslide victory in Austria, Kickl argued that “people everywhere are rising against the impositions of the EU centralists and left-wing ideologies,” and promised a new model of European cooperation based on national sovereignty.
Green Deal and immigration
The leaders agreed the EU and the European Commission president are the source of Europe’s social and economic malaise.
“The Green Deal is dead,” said Czechia’s Babiš, former prime minister and leader of ANO, currently topping the polls. “Brussels is leading us down a road that brings us to [economic] blackout and economic collapse,” he added.
“Energy policy is a fiasco, dragging our economies down. … Industrialists are openly rebelling against absurd and suicidal dictates,” said Le Pen.
The European migration pact also was in the spotlight, with all leaders at the rally blaming Brussels for incoming migrants.
“People have had enough of illegal immigration. And I ask you, do you have enough of crime in Spain? Do you have a lot of Islamic immigration in Spain? Do you have enough of woke insanity?” asked Dutch far-right leader Wilders, whose PVV party has been in government since May last year.
“Yes!” cheered the crowd as they repeated “Viva España.”
“You were the first who rolled back Islam and restored the rich heritage of Christianity in your country,” Wilders said. “That’s why we are great admirers of Spain.”
All the leaders at the rally also echoed a rejection of gender and sexual diversity, including repeated celebrations of Trump’s two-gender only policy.
“We will defend Christianity and traditional values. … We will defend traditional and normal family: mother, father and many children,” said Krzysztof Bosak, leader of Poland’s Konfederacja.
Looking for allies
But the Patriots for Europe are well aware they will not get far in Brussels’ democratic structures without other allies, as they currently are the third force in the European Parliament with 86 seats, and, for now, only hold one head of government out of 27.
Le Pen argued that, despite Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni belonging to another political party, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), “there are a number of issues we can all agree on.”
“And the issue of the day is: Are we or are we not going to stop with this Green Deal nonsense?” Le Pen said, arguing that the ECR will team up with them, but also with certain members of the center-right European People’s Party (EPP).
The EPP, the biggest European party holding the most leadership positions, has been flirting with the groups to its right, having voted alongside the Patriots to water down the EU’s deforestation regulation. However, they have for now stuck to their alliance with Socialists and Democrats and liberals.
“You must finally choose,” said Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini: “We ask you for the vision and courage to stop collaborating with the socialists and the left in Brussels. … The EPP must choose between a disastrous past and a future of change.”
At the same time, leader of Spain’s Vox party and the president of the Patriots, Santiago Abascal, said: “We have to reach out permanently to our allies in Europe,” wishing Alternative for Germany’s Alice Weidel, from the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) group, success in the upcoming German election.
“We have to know how to put aside our differences and live with them without that impeding constant cooperation in the face of common enemies,” Abascal said.
Prior to the rally, leaders on Friday met behind closed doors followed by a gala dinner with special guest Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, a leading U.S. Republican-linked conservative think tank.
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