France’s far right forms bloc in European Parliament The National Front claims it now has the votes to build its own group, boosting its reach in the body.

Marine Le Pen announced Tuesday that France’s far-right National Front has mustered enough support from other parties in the European Parliament to form a political group, giving anti-EU, anti-immigration MEPs more influence in the assembly.

The new group, named Europe of Nations and Freedoms, “will represent a political strike force that will go far beyond our previous situation,” Le Pen told reporters in Brussels.

By forming a group, the National Front (FN) will get more speaking time during Parliament plenary sessions and more staff. The party will also be better positioned to get its members on parliamentary committees, where groups exert control over access.

Le Pen was joined by Geert Wilders and MEP Marcel de Graaff of the Netherlands, Harald Vilimsky of Austria, and Janice Atkinson of the UK, who was previously sidelined by the Euroskeptic UK Independence Party following an alleged expenses scandal.

The National Front leader was defiant in her appearance, saying that efforts to marginalize MEPs who shared her beliefs helped her to build the group.

“I thank Martin Schulz who — while treating us like sub-deputies and persecuting us with his administration — has given us a burst of energy to form this strong, determined, coherent and ambitious group,” she said.

Le Pen confirmed that she and de Graaff would be the group’s co-chairs. The secretary general of the party will be Ludovic de Danne and the treasurer will be Gerolf Annemans of Belgium.

Listen to Le Pen's press conference in the European Parliament (in French):



Wilders described the parties’ efforts to form a party as “the beginning of our liberation” and a “historical moment.” With mass immigration and “islamization threatening Europe, Wilders said, “We want to be master again of our laws, of our money of our country.”

Listen to Geert Wilders (PVV) and Gerolf Annemans (Vlaams Belang) on their role in the new far-right group (in English and Dutch).



Atkinson said that she had more in common with Le Pen’s new group than with her previous Euroskeptic group, Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD), “who opposed most of the vote that UKIP took.”

“This is a start to get our countries back,” Atkinson said. “In my country we’ll have a referendum. I’ll bring a unique prospective in my campaign.”

The EFDD said in a statement: “Former Tory Janice Atkinson has been expelled from UKIP in March and suspended from the EFDD Group in the European Parliament. Whatever she does is beyond our control.”

Other MEPs reacted negatively to the news. Herbert Reul, who serves as whip in Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party called it “a bad day for Europe.”

Responding to news that Atkinson had joined the group, Catherine Bearder, an Alliance of Liberals and Democrats parliamentarian who comes from the same South East region of Britain as she does, said: “This is a disgraceful decision, by a disgraced MEP. The fact that the South East region now has a representative from this appalling political grouping is deeply disturbing. Janice Atkinson should do the honorable thing and resign, not prop up a group of Europe’s most hateful and far-right parties.”

Coming a year after Le Pen swept nearly a quarter of votes in France’s European Parliament elections, beating all other mainstream parties, the announcement puts an end to a paradoxical situation for the FN: What was probably Europe’s most popular far-right party had next to no power or influence in the European Parliament and almost no ability to weigh on EU affairs.

Le Pen had announced shortly after the election in May 2014 that the FN would very quickly form a group. But the promise didn’t hold as Le Pen, who is politically opposed to UKIP leader Nigel Farage, was kept out of the Euroskeptic EFDD group and failed to recruit deputies from enough nations to form a separate group for a year.

Zoya Sheftalovich and Cynthia Kroet contributed to this report.

This article was corrected on June 17. Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch parliament, and not an MEP.