A free speech fiasco united the far-right — here’s why they remain divided

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By EDDY WAX
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HELLO. There are 48 days until June 6. After a rather dreary European Council that produced more acronyms than news, it’s clear that the story of the week was the free speech furor around the National Conservatism Conference, which was both canceled and not canceled at the same time — a bit like Schrödinger’s cat, if the cat had been a Brexiteer.
On a serious note, the conference gave Europe’s Euroskeptic forces a massive boost ahead of crunch national, EU and U.K. elections in the coming year. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, the U.K.’s Rishi Sunak, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán all weighed in and Nigel Farage even went on Fox news on Thursday. The hard right has never looked so united … but is it really such a happy family? 
THREE REASONS EUROPE’S HARD RIGHT IS DIVIDED: The perennial talk of a tie-up between the two political groups to the right of Ursula von der Leyen’s European People’s Party is getting louder and louder. The two groups — the European Conservatives and Reformists and Identity & Democracy — have lots in common: They hate the EU’s new migration pact, they hate the Green Deal and argue it’s being brought in at the expense of farmers, and they accuse the European Commission of politically charged overreach. 
This week I chased former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki down a Parliament corridor to ask him if the hard-right was coalescing … perhaps into a single group in the next European Parliament? His walking-talking answer: “It’s too early to say, it takes two to tango.” It wasn’t a yes but it wasn’t entirely a no — and we know that such talks took place and narrowly failed not so long ago. 
An ECR-ID group would be the Parliament’s second largest, just after the EPP, my colleague Jakob Hanke Vela points out, meaning big implications on policy in the next five-year legislature. When I spoke with Morawiecki, he had just come from a press conference with Orbán and Fabrice Leggeri, one of the big guns that French National Rally chief Marine Le Pen has moved onto her electoral battlefield. Organized by the ECR group and taking place at the same time as the National Conservatism Conference, it was a packed room and its attendees — from the Flemish Vlaams Belang and Spain’s Vox to the German far-right — were a veritable who’s who of the EU rightwing.  
Not happening: “There is no chance to merge,” top Brothers of Italy MEP Carlo Fidanza told my colleague Sarah Wheaton in an interview at an ECR party conference last month. But even if a full-blown merger doesn’t happen, three big factors make the right’s apparent show of strength and unity this week seem less certain.  
Ukraine. Hungary and Poland don’t see eye to eye on supporting Ukraine, and though Orbán is desperately keen to join Morawiecki’s ECR, we’ve reported in this newsletter before about the staunchly pro-Ukrainian parties in ECR who are deeply unhappy about that prospect. Orbán largely avoided the issue of the war in Ukraine at the press conference with Morawiecki, only to argue that it should be hived off from talk of Ukraine joining the EU. At NatCon he dismissed a suggestion he was Vladimir Putin’s ally, but then said Ukraine can’t win on the battlefield and that he supports Ukraine “to survive somehow” — not exactly fulsome backing. 
Franco-German feud. Within the far-right ID group, a feud is bubbling between the Alternative for Germany and the National Rally. While the AfD, which will be led into elections by MEP Maximilian Krah, is becoming ever more radical, Le Pen’s party has for years been on a mission to appeal to more mainstream voters — putting them on a collision course. This week, the fight flared up again after AfD leader Alice Weidel lodged a parliamentary letter questioning the French ownership of the island of Mayotte — which is exactly where Le Pen is soon scheduled to be campaigning. If the two biggest delegations in the ID group can’t get on, then can the group survive? 
Backing Ursula. The most powerful branch of the ECR group is the Brothers of Italy, whose leader, Meloni, has developed a close relationship with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — who is depicted as everything that’s wrong with Brussels by Orbán and Co. It seems likely that VDL is counting on the support of the Fratelli to get her across the line in a crunch vote in Parliament later in the year. That could put the ECR at odds with Hungary. Orbán has called for a leadership change in Brussels and it is clear that his campaign back home will be squarely focused on making VDL out to be a danger to Hungarian national interests. 
PARTY LINE, WHAT PARTY LINE? MEPs’ voting record per group reveals major differences between lawmakers’ ideological agreement with other group members. While the Greens have cast the same vote in the vast majority of roll calls, the Identity & Democracy group stands out for its dissent.
A closer look reveals clear country blocks within the group. Italy’s League and France’s National Rally — which each have about 20 MEPs — often dictated the ID majority, “only” voting about 20 percent of the time against the group’s majority vote.
But lawmakers from Alternative for Germany, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and Austria’s Freedom Party disagreed about 30 percent of the time, while Denmark and the Czech Republic’s lawmakers’ votes went another way a whopping 40 percent of the time.
The average share of votes, which MEPs cast against the group majority, according to MEPs’ latest group.
The pros and cons of cross-border life
Lucas Joyeux is one of the nearly 100,000 residents of eastern France who travel daily to work in Luxembourg, a figure that keeps going up and which a study by the French statistics office attributed to a quest for higher wages.
He’s also a firm defender of the European ideal. “Feeling European doesn’t mean disavowing your heritage,” Joyeux said. “It means acknowledging that whether you’re German, Polish or Romanian, you have something in common to fall back on.”
Life in the region of Moselle, where Joyeux lives, is largely structured around the border with Luxembourg, with residents enjoying many of the benefits of the EU’s passport-free Schengen area and the single market. There are long queues at gas stations in Luxembourg filled with French people taking advantage of cheaper fuel, and smokers buying packs of cigarettes at around half the price charged in France.     
In Thionville, Moselle’s second most populous city, the freely distributed newspaper is the Luxembourgish daily L’Essentiel, and some street signs are even translated into German.
Surely this region, which relies so much on the benefits of crossing borders, will vote for pro-EU parties in June’s European election? Maybe not. 
Fabienne Menichetti, mayor of Ottange, a small French border town, said she was stunned by both the low turnout in her town during the 2019 European election, and the far-right’s strong performance, and is worried about the outcome being the same this year. 
“We’re right along the border, enjoying European amenities on a daily basis, we even have part of the population working directly for EU institutions, yet our turnout numbers are barely above 40 percent, below the national average,” she said.
This region of France, which was once represented in the National Assembly by one of the EU’s founding fathers, Robert Schuman, is far from being a haven of EU-loving citizens.
In the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who once advocated for France to leave the EU and continues to call out its “obese technocratic structure,” finished ahead in the first round of voting. 
A few months after the election, her National Rally party picked up three of the region’s nine seats in the lower house of parliament.
Support for the far right “completely baffles me,” Menichetti told POLITICO. 
Menichetti said about 80 percent of households in her town have ties with Luxembourg, with at least one member of the household working in the Grand Duchy. 
“Due to our closeness with the border, we have many foreign communities in our town, with many people coming from Portugal, Italy or Luxembourg. Yet it feels like Europe doesn’t resonate with them beyond where they work,” the non-affiliated mayor said. 
Daniel Schmidt, who runs a small business focusing on workplace health and security requirements, reckons the deindustrialization of Moselle, with the factories that once dotted the landscape having closed down, has fuelled the far right. 
In 2012, steel giant ArcelorMittal — which is headquartered in Luxembourg — closed its plant in the town of Hayange. With rising unemployment and economic uncertainty, two years later, a National Rally mayor was elected.
by Victor Goury-Laffont
Victor’s full story will be published early next week.
Swedish MEP Sara Skyttedal was not kicked out of the EPP for forming a totally new party for the election — but she won’t be allowed to represent them in plenary nor use the EPP’s funds, she told me. Why was she at NatCon (the only EPP person I saw there)? In a personal capacity, she said. 
Ilaria Salis, an Italian anti-fascist activist who is detained in a Hungarian jail awaiting trial on assault charges, will lead the ticket for Italy’s Green-Left alliance. She made headlines after appearing in court shackled and handcuffed. Il Foglio got the scoop. David Lundy, the Left group spokesperson, called it a positive signal. Her father will be in Strasbourg next week, according to the Greens.
RECORD-BREAKING FINAL PLENARY! MEPs head to Strasbourg next week for the last plenary before the election. EP spox Delphine Colard said there were 89 final votes on the agenda, a record for the Parliament and a higher number than the final plenary of the 2014-2019 legislature. The FT’s Andy Bounds asked a good question about whether this was a planning failure and good for parliamentary scrutiny. 
Next week, big votes are expected on “simplifying” (or gutting green rules from) the Common Agricultural Policy, a new ethics body, and a debate on the Middle East. Here’s the extremely packed agenda. Greens’ group spokesperson Simon McKeageny said he felt a mixture of “relief, sadness and joy.” 
SOME ELECTION INTEREST: Good news! Er, sort of. The latest Eurobarometer data shows that 60 percent of Europeans are at the very least interested in the upcoming election. That may sound like the bar is low, and that is because it is — Eurobarometer data from before the 2019 election showed just shy of 50 percent reported interest.
Plus this is the first Eurobarometer since 2011 in which a higher share of Europeans have a positive image (a whopping 41 percent) of the European Parliament than a neutral one, so no wonder everyone is so excited.
CAMPAIGN AGENDA THIS WEEK:  
EPP: Ursula von der Leyen has no campaign events planned this weekend. 
(Very busy) Socialists: Lead candidate Nicolas Schmit is campaigning with center-left parties in Vienna and Florence this weekend, with SPÖ leader Andreas Babler and PD Florence Mayor Dario Nardella, and on Monday he’ll be in Berlin to meet the SPD board, and then on Wednesday in Strasbourg he will campaign with MEPs Raphaël Glücksmann and Katarina Barley. Also, check out his thinly-veiled attack on von der Leyen’s running of the Commission here.
Liberals: ALDE is holding a forum today in Budapest with its Hungarian Momentum, Progressive Slovakia, Austrian NEOS, and Romanian USR parties. 
Greens: The Dutch Green-Left congress will take place on Saturday. 
European Left: Walter Baier heads to Lisbon on Saturday for a conference on fighting the far-right, entitled No Pasarán!
BRUSSELS ELECTION BUZZWORDS: “Competitiveness” and “Bolshewokism.” Two words bouncing around the EU Quarter this week, two different election messages. This week’s episode of POLITICO’s EU Confidential podcast decodes these concepts targeting very different audiences. Listen here.
IN OUR THOUGHTS: Monika Hohlmeier, the EPP chair of the Budgetary Control Committee, is in critical condition in hospital, BILD reports.
**Are you a young European looking to have a say in this year’s EU elections? We’re looking for you! Join the Maastricht Debate on April 29th as a Youth Ambassador or follow the event online** 
POLITICO’s Leyla Aksu and Paul Dallison have made another playlist of songs to get you in the mood for the election. This week’s has some top tunes from Luxembourg. Here it is. Enjoy.
MEP trivia: This week I’d like to know the names of the two most famous bars in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Answers by email, please. I love hearing from readers so don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Last week, I asked you to name which country has the most MEPs who are not attached to a political grouping in the European Parliament. The answer is Hungary, which has 13 non-attached MEPs, 12 of which are from Orbán’s Fidesz, and one from the far-right Jobbik. But Italy has a whopping nine and Greece has seven non-attached MEPs. Overall, there are a massive 51 unattached MEPs at the end of this legislature, which is more MEPs than there are in the Left group. 
MEPs tend to drop out of the main seven political groups if they quit their national political parties, get kicked out for bad behavior, or if the whole national party itself simply isn’t aligned with a broader EU family. 
Congratulations to Jillian Gaborieau from BCW, APCO’s Thomas Thaler, and Association of European Cancer Leagues’ Toma Mikalauskaitė for their correct and swift answers. 
Casual reminder: We’re also on WhatsApp! Follow our account here to stay up to date on the latest European election news in between Playbook editions.
Current election excitement level: Bolshewokism!
Last word: “Ukraine is not a sovereign state anymore. It’s a protectorate of the West,” said Viktor Orbán at NatCon. 
THANKS TO: Hanne Cokelaere, Lucia Mackenzie, Koen Verhelst, Sarah Wheaton and Paul Dallison.
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