Argentine President Javier Milei, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli and Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s Rassemblement National (RN) party, gathered in Madrid for an event organised by the right-wing VOX party, the third largest in the Spanish parliament, ahead of the European Parliament elections in June.
Former US President Donald Trump, represented at the event by Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, vice presidents of the conservative US think tank Heritage Foundation and former White House staffers, received a round of applause.
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which includes VOX and Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, presented most of its manifesto in the Spanish capital over the weekend as part of VOX’s “Europa VIVA 24” event.
Defending a “strong and sovereign Europe”, reducing Brussels bureaucracy, strengthening border security and reviewing the Green Deal are some of the ECR’s priorities ahead of the elections.
The Conservatives unofficially launched their campaign with strong messages against illegal immigration and the EU’s climate policy, while declaring their support for Israel in its war in Gaza.
Orbán, Le Pen and Meloni speak out
The presentation of the ECR’s manifesto and VOX’s programme for the EU political race attracted a lot of media attention. Javier Milei, a personal friend of VOX leader Santiago Abascal, and Le Pen were present in Madrid, while Meloni and Orbán joined the event via video conference.
In his video address, Meloni said: “We are on the eve of a decisive election (…). It is time to mobilise, it is time to take to the streets. It is time to raise the bar, we must fight until the last day,” Meloni said.
“Dear Spanish friends, we patriots must occupy Brussels,” Orbán said in his message.
Orbán described the campaign for the European elections as a “great common war” against Brussels, which he said was “unleashing mass illegal immigration” and “poisoning our children with sex propaganda”.
According to Orban, VOX politicians and activists are “dedicated fighters” who can help “make Europe great again”, in a reference to former US president Donald Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”.
“Today there are many who want to change the direction of the European Union, and on 9 June there will be many more,” Le Pen said, arguing that VOX “represents the Spanish patriotic movement that can be counted on at the European level to revitalise Europe”.
Le Pen argued that if the European Commission “takes away the sovereignty of European nations forever”, the consequences for the future of the countries would be disastrous.
The French leader, who has made clear her desire to work with VOX in the European Parliament, accused current European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her allies of wanting an EU “subjected to uniformity” and warned: “We are the defenders of Europe, they are the destroyers.”
Israeli Minister: We are defending Western civilisation against radical Islam
According to Haaretz, Chikli took the stage to rapturous applause from his front-row seat between Vox leader Abascal and Le Pen and spoke about 7 October, calling it “the rotten fruit of radical Islam”.
Referring to the families of Noa Argamani and Bibas, Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, and reading the transcript of a Hamas member’s phone call to his family in Gaza “celebrating how many Israelis he had killed”, Chikli said: “It takes a village to raise a child. But it also takes a village to raise rapists and murderers,” he said.
Chikli described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as “a war we do not want, a war we have no choice but to fight and win for the sake of our children and the free world”.
The minister returned to the “global threat of radical Islam” several times during his 15-minute speech. At one point, Chikli said: “This war is not just about Gaza, or the state of Israel, or even the Middle East. It is an existential struggle for the future of Western civilisation against radical Islam,” he said, to which the congressional crowd “burst into applause”. He hit back.
The Israeli minister criticised Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for supporting a Palestinian state, while praising Vox leader Abascal and thanking him for his visit to Israel in December.
Chikli said: “Unlike the others, you didn’t do it for a photo opportunity or to get out of line. Unlike others, your good heart led you to side with the State of Israel instead of Hamas and Iran. Thank you, Abascal, for standing on the side of truth,” he said.
Chikli then returned to the threat to Europe posed by what he called “reckless immigration policies”. He criticised “ghettos full of Islamic immigrants, which often become hotbeds of religious fanaticism” and called for a rejection of “multiculturalism”, which he described as “a complete failure that has brought this continent to the brink of existential danger”.
“The silent majority has spoken,” Chikli concluded, thanking the Spanish for using their “common sense” to give Israel the highest possible score in last week’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Likud-European right ties strengthen
As a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Chikli has been attending events in Europe organised by right-wing parties described as ‘national conservatives’.
In December, Chikli met with Vox president Santiago Abascal, whom he described as “a man of truth who stands as a beacon of moral clarity in the twilight when moral relativism threatens to collapse Western civilisation”.
Last month, Chikli also attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Hungary, where he praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as a “supporter of Israel”.
Chikli spoke alongside Tom Van Grieken, the leader of Belgium’s Vlaams Belang party, which promotes the ‘Great Displacement’ theory, a prominent feature of the European right, which uses the term ‘omvolking’ (‘repopulation’) to refer to European migration, particularly from Muslim countries, and which is associated with the Nazis.
Earlier this year, Chikli also met with Sweden’s right-wing Sweden Democrats. The party, the second largest in the Swedish parliament, has a Nazi past and its members have been criticised in recent years for links to neo-Nazi movements. Israel has so far refrained from establishing official ties with the party, but the Sweden Democrats have declared themselves “the most pro-Israel party in Sweden”.
At a conference organised by the European Jewish Association in Krakow in January, Chikli said that his official capacity would not encourage him to ally himself with Diaspora Jews involved in international protests against Israel’s occupation of Gaza.
“I don’t consider a Jew who feels at home in a crowd shouting ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ to be a Jew. I don’t want to build a bridge with him,” Chikli told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Milei sparks diplomatic crisis
Argentine President Javier Milei received a standing ovation for his speech denouncing the “left” and defending free market capitalism.
On the other hand, he called for a “cultural war”, which is also necessary for a government “so that the policies implemented are permanent and that in the future there are citizens who defend their freedoms and do not allow themselves to be trampled by socialists who ‘even control football’ in their country (for example in North Korea or Cuba)”.
“Let’s go back to defending the values that made the West great: life, freedom and property,” Milei concluded.
After thanking Vox leader Santiago Abascal for his friendship “on Mother’s Day, when I was lonelier than Adam”, Milei said that socialism was “cursed and cancerous” and “invites death”, and sparked a diplomatic crisis when he called Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s wife “corrupt”.
In response to Milei’s harsh words, Spain recalled its ambassador to Buenos Aires, María Jesús Alonso, for consultations.
On Sunday, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares demanded that Milei “publicly apologise” for his remarks, which he described as “extremely serious”. In the absence of an apology, he announced that Spain would take “appropriate measures” to protect its “sovereignty and dignity”.
Milei’s remarks “transcend all political and ideological differences” and are “unprecedented in the history of international relations, and even more so in the history of relations between two countries and two peoples united by strong fraternal ties”, the minister said.
The European Right is increasing its vote: ECR programme announced
The two groups hosting right-wing formations in the European Parliament are ECR, which includes VOX as well as Italy’s Brothers of Italy and Poland’s former ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), and Identity and Democracy (ID), home to the RN, Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Matteo Salvini’s League.
The latest Europe Elects projection for Euractiv shows that the ECR and ID will each win 83 MEPs. In the 2019 elections, the ID won 73 MEPs and the ECR 62.
Meloni is the current president of the ECR and the group’s vice-president is Spanish VOX MEP Hermann Tertsch.
In its election manifesto, the ECR expresses, among other things, its “firm commitment to the preservation of national identity, the security of citizens and the strengthening of borders”.
The ECR group also rejects the “unnecessary centralisation of power in Brussels” and proposes to reform the EU so that it “respects and protects the sovereignty and traditions of the member states”. It also calls for a “strong European defence”, increasing military assistance to Ukraine and increasing the defence budgets of all partners in line with NATO’s call for 2% of GDP.
The manifesto also states that the ECR calls for a “comprehensive migration strategy” to secure the EU’s borders, which would include initiatives such as granting asylum in Europe “only” to “genuine refugees”.
The ECR group also calls for an overhaul of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), arguing for a strengthening of the “farm to fork” strategy and a revision of the Green Deal to prioritise the “socio-economic well-being” of the sector.
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