Leaders of Europe’s newest hard-right grouping, which includes Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Italy’s Matteo Salvini and the Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders, will put on a show of strength before a crowd expected to number 25,000 at a rally on Sunday at an Italian site considered “sacred” by Salvini’s League party.
Formed in June by the Hungarian prime minister, the Patriots for Europe are now the third biggest bloc in the EU parliament, with 86 MEPs, and are aiming to curb the power of Brussels, slam the brakes on migration and slow support for Ukraine.
The line-up also includes Marlene Svazek, vice-president of Austria’s Freedom Party, which co-founded the Patriots with Orban and is seeking to form a government in Vienna after grabbing 29 per cent of the vote in elections at the weekend.
Matteo Salvini, left, met Viktor Orban in Budapest last month
EPA
Another prominent Patriots member is Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Rally, who will address the rally by video, as will the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. “It will be a day of liberty, security and justice. Let’s make our voices heard,” Salvini said this week.
The event will be held in a meadow at Pontida, northern Italy, a revered spot for Salvini’s party, which has held annual rallies there for years to mark the Lombard League, an alliance forged in 1167 by northern Italian cities to combat the Holy Roman Empire. The alliance has been likened by some to a medieval version of the European Union.
Salvini’s stock has risen on the right in Europe since an Italian prosecutor last month asked a judge to jail him for six years for stranding 100 migrants at sea and refusing to let them land when he was interior minister in 2019. That earned him support from, among others, the US tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and 100,000 Italians who signed a petition to keep him out of jail. A ruling on the case is expected at the end of October.
Now Italy’s transport minister and deputy prime minister, Salvini is expected to use the Pontida gathering to raise his profile at the expense of his ally and rival, the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, who is treading a fine line in Europe between the Patriots on the right and centrist backers of the EU commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.
Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom party, will attend the rally
GETTY IMAGES
Meloni has refused to join the Patriots, despite overtures from Le Pen, instead staying loyal to the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the EU parliament, even after the Spanish Vox party jumped ship to join the Patriots. Vox’s ties to Orban emerged this week with allegations that the party financed its electoral campaign for Spanish municipal and general elections last year with two loans totalling €9.2 million from a Hungarian bank.
The investigative journalism publication VSquare first reported on the loan, suggesting that the lender was Magyar Bankholding (MBH), whose biggest shareholder is Lorinc Meszaros, a Hungarian tycoon and childhood friend of Orban.
Meszaros has in the past financed a campaign run by Le Pen, El Pais reported. Pepa Millán, Vox party’s parliamentary spokeswoman, said: “I don’t know if this bank is close to Orban or not, I know it is a Hungarian bank.”
She justified the request for a loan from the Hungarian bank by saying it had been impossible to obtain funds in Spain in time for the polls. Millán claimed the amount totalled €6.5 million and denied that Vox had breached Spain’s law on party financing, arguing that the cash was a loan, not a donation. “It is a loan that has already been repaid with interest, and we would have liked that money to stay in Spain,” she said.
Source link : https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/europes-right-wing-leaders-rally-25000-at-italys-sacred-ground-h66qzrmb2
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Publish date : 2024-10-02 19:30:53
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