The EU right-of-center establishment has dismissed attempts by Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini to forge a united front of nationalist parties for May’s European Parliament elections.
The euroskeptic Italian populist has so far failed to recruit Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban or Poland’s ruling party, European People’s Party (EPP) Secretary-General Antonio Lopez-Isturiz said in an interview.
“Salvini can continue with his theater and circus around Europe,” said Lopez-Isturiz, whose EPP includes conservative parties such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union.
Salvini, of the rightist League, is in talks with like-minded parties across the EU ahead of the continent-wide elections he calls “the battle of battles,” which he portrays as a showdown between the liberal establishment led by French President Emmanuel Macron and champions of national sovereignty.
The Party of European Socialists, the second-largest group in the parliament, has staked out similar ground as the EPP, denouncing the divisive politics of parties in Hungary, Poland and Italy.
“The nationalists are particularly good at destroying things. Just like an unhinged toddler destroys toys,” European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans, who is running as the PES candidate to be the commission’s next president, said last month in a speech in the Netherlands.
“What they’re unable to do is to create something, to actually build something. And, sooner or later, the people will see this,” he said.
The parliament will have a key role in approving the new European Commission, meaning that the contest has the potential to determine the future direction of the continent’s integration project.
Lopez-Isturiz is more than skeptical about Salvini’s crusade.
“It is very unlikely that far-right groups can get together,” he said.
However, it was possible that they could form a political group after the elections “in order to get a secretary, civil servants, and money,” he said.
As for the EPP, it will not “polarize the elections between pro- and anti-Europeans,” and instead would focus on the group’s record over the past five years, “including salvation of the European Union and several of its member states,” Lopez-Isturiz said.
Last month in Warsaw, Salvini called for a “new European spring” after meeting Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s governing Law and Justice party.
The League and its EU counterparts often have contrasting views on immigration, the bloc’s budget and relations with Russia.
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