The chairman of the Austrian FPÖ party, Herbert Kickl, says that the party will establish a new political group in the European Parliament.
Veikko Eromäki,
Jussi Nurminen
11:39•Updated 15:50
Chairman of the far-right Austrian party FPÖ Herbert Kickl says the party’s founding new European Parliament group Hungary Viktor Orbán Fidesz and the Czech Republic Andrej Babishin with the ANO party.
Kickl announced this at a press conference, where Orbán and Babiš were also present. Kickl said he believes that “several European parties will join the group in the coming days”.
However, the emergence of a new group is not certain. Member parties from at least seven of the 27 member states are required for the European Parliament Group. In addition, the group must have at least 23 members.
Kickl and partners therefore need four more parties in their group before a place in the European Parliament is secured.
The FPÖ in its current form is a far-right party that has long been a significant force in Austrian politics. The party won the recently held European elections with a 25.4 percent vote share in Austria.
FPÖ was mired in an oligarch scandal
Before this, the FPÖ suffered a long period of low support after its reputation was tarnished in the so-called Ibiza scandal. The scandal revealed the willingness of the party leadership to cooperate with Russian oligarchs in exchange for political support.
Like the FPÖ, Orbán’s Fidesz and Babiš’s ANO represent nationalist, conservative and Eurosceptic politics.
FPÖ, which now has six representatives, has been part of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European Parliament. With the departure of the FPÖ, only six parties remain in the ID group.
The seven-member ANO has been part of the liberal Renew Europe group, but Babiš announced last week that his party would leave Renew.
Until 2021, Fidesz, which has 11 parliamentarians, belonged to the largest group in the European Parliament, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP). Since then, Fidesz has remained outside the groupings of the European Parliament.
Sources: AFP, Reuters
The story was corrected on June 30, 2024 at 3:49 p.m. Additional information was added to the story about the requirements for forming a European Parliament group, and the number of member parties the group must have was specified.