Anti-globalists announce new group ahead of EP elections

The new group will also include the Danish People’s Party and the The Finns, reported the news agency dpa.

Meuthen emphasized that the joint meeting on Monday with League leader Matteo Salvini in Milan had been “the starting signal for something new”. The proposed faction welcomes all parties that value attributes such as conservative and patriotic. “We do not welcome socialists, communists, eco-fascists and extremists – from the left as well as from the right,” Meuthen said.

Anders Vistisen from the Danish People’s Party and Olli Kotro from The Finns took part in the meeting. Other parties are to strengthen the group. Together, they want to “radically change” the EU and seek comprehensive reforms, Meuthen explained.

According to the APA News Agency, Salvini’s party is currently negotiating a deal with Fidesz, the party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as well as the Spanish Vox. “Today, the first nucleus of a large European family was born. Our goal is to win the EU elections and change the rules of Europe,” Salvini said.

“We are working for a new European dream. For many families and citizens, the EU has become a nightmare. We work for employment, family policy, safety, environmental protection and the future of young people. If the EU is based only on finance, bureaucracy and pure economic thinking, it has no future,” said the 46-year-old Italian Interior Minister.

Together with the other parties, Meuthen says he wants to work on “Fortress Europe”. One of the political objectives is to reject immigrants at the external borders. Meuthen spoke of an important step in European policy in the coming years and Salvini praised the cooperation with “Friends of the AfD”.

In the EU Parliament, the League is currently part of the “Europe of Nations and Freedom” faction with the FPÖ and the French National Rally counting some 37 parliamentarians. According to Salvini, the new group will have around 150 members.

The new alliance of nationalist parties from across Europe, will bring Salvini’s proposed “League of Leagues” to life.

Touting a “vision for Europe for the next 50 years,” Salvini joined hands to announce a challenge to the establishment in European Parliament ahead of the upcoming elections.

“We are building a community, a family. I am working on a new European project,” Salvini said at an event in Milan branded ‘Towards a Common Sense Europe!’ It is the alliance that looks into the future. We will start from today, and from today our family will enlarge.”

AfD spokesman Joerg Meuthen. “At the moment, we are four parties [in the EAPN]. But when the last plenary session in Strasbourg ends on April 18, on this day, I am sure we will have at least 10 member parties in our alliance.”

“We want to ensure that the European Union is reformed so that more power can be given to the member states and less powers to the bureaucracy in Brussels,” Meuthen is quoted as saying in a tweet from Salvini.

“Proud of the first international conference organised today in Milan, for an alliance that talks about the future, to bring back to the center the work, the family, the safety, the protection of the environment, with the aim of bringing the government back to the people,” Salvini tweeted.

Salvini had already announced his intention to unite anti-globalist forces across the continent last year.

“To win we had to unite Italy, now we will have to unite Europe… I am thinking about a ‘League of the Leagues of Europe,’ bringing together all the free and sovereign movements that want to defend their people and their borders,” Salvini told a huge crowd in Milan in summer of 2018. “I will tour capital cities – and not just European ones – to create an alternative to this Europe founded on exploitation… and mass immigration.”