Le Pen-Orbán Alliance – ‘Patriots for Europe’ Becomes 3rd Largest in EU Parliament

A new European parliamentary alliance between Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, along with other leading populists, has just become the third largest group in the EU Parliament.

It is also the biggest populist group in the history of the bloc.

The announcement of the new alliance came after France’s surprise election result, where Le Pen’s National Rally came third after tactical voting to block the far right.

Other prominent partners within the new ‘Patriots for Europe’ group will include Italy’s Matteo Salvini’s Lega, the ANO party of former Czech PM Andrej Babiš, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), Spain’s populist VOX party, and Dutch kingmaker Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV). 

The Patriots “will be decisive in changing the future of Europe” Salvini said.

Breitbart reports: Off the back of large gains across the continent in last month’s EU Parliament elections, a new populist grouping has leapfrogged Giorgia Meloni’s centre-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Emmanuel Macron’s neo-liberal Renew Europe (RE) to become the third-largest faction in Brussels.

Replacing the Identity and Democracy (ID) group, the Patriots for Europe group will be headlined by former French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz.

With 84 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), the new grouping will have only 11 more than its ID predecessor, however, its impact will be enhanced by the reduction of parliamentarians from 750 to 720. It also marks the largest grouping of populist factions in the history of the EU Parliament, the Guardian reports.

It also means the populists have surpassed Meloni’s ECR (78) and Macron’s RE (76) in voting strength and only behind Ursula von der Leyen’s European People’s Party (EPP) at 188 and the Socialists & Democrats (SD) at 136.

The group will be led by rising National Rally star Jordan Bardella and Hungary’s Kinga Gál as the vice chairman.

“The Patriots for Europe represent hope for the tens of millions of citizens in the European Nations who value their identity, their sovereignty and their freedom,” Bardella said per Euronews.

Hungarian leader Orbán said: “We don’t want a European empire, we don’t want a European United States, we don’t want gray mass control from Brussels, we don’t want a command-and-control system. We want national sovereignty and independence under our own national flags.”