Abascal and his colleagues are confident of a growing wave of Trumpism in Europe. spain

Self-proclaimed European patriots met at a Paris mansion on the 16th to celebrate Donald Trump’s election victory. Frenchwoman Marine Le Pen, Dutchman Geert Wilders and Spaniard Santiago Abascal, among others, attended the meeting. But, although the first was the host and the one that contributes the most representatives to the group in the European Parliament – ​​30 out of 86, three times as many as Fidesz’s Hungarians – the undisputed figure of the meeting was Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. And not only because he was the only one of them who headed the government, but above all, because Trump named him his friend in Europe and this year in his mansion in Mar-a-Lago (Florida). He was welcomed twice. , After describing the President-elect of the United States as “a patriot” and congratulating himself on his “monumental victory”, Orbán called on his supporters to learn a lesson from the North American campaign. First, he assured, “that the left will do everything possible to destroy us politically, morally and legally.” If we want to win then everything is justified to stop us.

Although his party makes popular accusations in the cases opened in Spanish courts against Pedro Sánchez’s wife and brother, Abascal joins the complaint. Law and order and criticized the “judicial harassment” that Le Pen and Matteo Salvini are reportedly facing. The president of National Rally faces a disqualification sentence for alleged embezzlement of EU funds, having been accused of transferring funds from the European Parliament to the party; While prosecutors are demanding six years in jail for the Italian League leader after he prevented 147 migrants rescued at sea from disembarking in Lampedusa when he was interior minister.

The formal reason for the meeting was to appoint the Spaniard as president of Patriots.EU, which is its official name. In principle, it is a new European party; In fact, it is a continuation of an already existing training, under another name: Identity and Democracy (ID). For this reason, although the party had just been founded, Abascal was presented as the successor to the Belgian Gerolf Annemans, former leader of the Flemish ultranationalist formation Vlaams Bellang and president of the ID. The main difference between Patriots.es and ID is the arrival of Orbán, who has brought together Vox and the Portuguese Chega to unite 15 parties from 13 countries and replace the group as the third force in the European Parliament ECR. Led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and including Spanish MEPs.

The inclusion of new partners has forced internal power quotas to be redistributed: if Abascal has secured the presidency of the European party; That of the parliamentary group, with more specific importance, corresponds to the Frenchman Jordan Bardella; And its foundation was given to Hungarian András László. The extreme nationalism of the Patriots is not dissimilar to globalism: it aims to “homogenize the institutional vision of Europe” and “permanent coordination of the respective national strategies” of them all.

Ultra International will not be limited to the declaratory field. The summit host proposed creating a common fund to pay fines imposed by judges; And bankers close to Orbán have already financed the election campaigns of Le Pen and Abascal.

Beyond the similarities, the ultra groups of the European Parliament are configured according to national fears: Auer’s Romanians, close to Vox, reject Orbán, who wants to protect the Hungarian minority in Romania; While Abascal is incompatible with Elvis; and Marine Le Pen with her niece Marion Maréchal Le Pen, as well as the Alternative Germans of Germany, whom the French woman expelled from the group for her complacency towards Nazism.

To accommodate its new partners, Vox has had to struggle ideologically: Le Pen, who celebrated a return to economic protectionism with Trump on Saturday, contrasts the anarcho-capitalism of Abascal’s ally, Argentina Miley; As does Orban, Putin’s defense lawyer in the EU, Poles from Law and Justice, with whom Vox shared a group in the previous legislature. The Spanish leader condemned the Russian aggression in his public statements, but in the first roll call vote of the new European Parliament legislature last July, his representatives rejected a resolution calling for Kiev to maintain political, military and financial support. Orban’s meeting with Putin. It is not that he was absent, he was absent so that he did not have to have his pictures taken.

Perhaps that is why the program of European patriots is so brief: it focuses on rejecting European institutions, which they call bureaucratic and globalist; and protecting the right of states to withdraw from the European Agreement on Migration; To harm border countries like Spain. In Paris, Wilders received the support of his coreligionists for the Dutch government’s new package of anti-immigration measures, of which his Party for Freedom (PVV) is a part; Among them, the expulsion of migrants from areas of Syria that Amsterdam has unilaterally declared safe; and the loss of nationality of Dutch people of Moroccan origin convicted of terrorism or anti-Semitism. The latter is the only form of racism that extremist parties mention.

The second lesson Orbán learned from the US elections is that those who advise him to moderate his speech are wrong. He declared, “There is no need to move towards the Centre, because the Center has already moved towards us.” Self-proclaimed patriots consider it a victory that the populace supported the creation of a center for immigrants outside the community area; Or amending the reforestation law, a cornerstone of the European Green Deal, which extremists hate. And they are committed to breaking the European Bloc (populist, liberal, green and socialist) before the end of the current legislature and replacing it with the Agreement for Venezuela, in the context of the motion that voted to elect Edmundo González as President of Venezuela. Was recognized as all is well.

To do this, they have the powerful push that Trump’s return to the White House will give them. “We can already see the wind of change (blowing) in our faces all across the West. We cannot miss this opportunity,” Abascal declared. Orbán, the holder of the Trumpism franchise in the EU, has already changed his motto: “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) to “Make Europe Great Again” (MEGA). One of the first people to congratulate Abascal on his appointment to Patriots.es was Matt Schlapp, president of CPAC, the ultra-conservative convention in the United States that launched Trump as a candidate, who wrote “CPAC Spain The Vox leader was congratulated for directing “. ”, in his words. He said, “God bless the boss!”