Patriots for Europe, the newly minted European Parliament group, created just over a week ago by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, along with the president of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), Herbert Kickl, and the Czech ANO’s Andrej Babiš, has seen explosive growth in a short period of time. Another five parties have now joined since its initial launch, meaning it meets the criteria for starting its own faction in the EU parliament.
After the founding of the group, the Portuguese Chega party was the first to indicate that it would join the group, and then the Spanish party Vox declared it would join the Patriots for Europe party family, which it later did.
Last week, Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), which won the Dutch elections in November, announced that his party would join the group. On Saturday, the Danish People’s Party (DK) and the Belgian right-wing Flemish Interest (VB) party led by Tom Van Grieken decided to also join.
Thus, the Patriots for Europe party alliance has already fulfilled the conditions to become a political group: To form a political group, at least 23 MEPs representing at least a quarter of the member states are needed. At present, eight member states and 42 MEPs belong to the alliance.
The question is whether the French National Rally will join Viktor Orbán’s alliance; negotiations for this have already begun. Also, the leader of the Italian League party, Matteo Salvini, has spoken about the possibility of joining, with Salvini saying that “they are working on it.”
