Steven N.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will take part in a meeting of European conservative party leaders in Madrid this weekend, Bertalan Havasi, press chief of the Prime Minister’s Office, told state news agency MTI.
The Spanish press was the first to report that Europe’s far-right leaders would be getting together again. El Independiente wrote that Santiago Abascal, president of the Spanish far-right Vox party, had invited European leaders to Madrid this weekend.
Abascal decided to hold the summit despite the growing crisis in Ukraine, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki have already indicated that they would be attending.
A similar meeting took place in Warsaw in December, but the attendees were not able to form a new group in the European Parliament as they had planned. Neither Matteo Salvini, former Italian interior minister and president of the far-right Northern League party, nor Giorgia Meloni, president of the national-conservative Brothers of Italy party, were in attendance.
While the Warsaw Summit officially held talks on the future of the European Union and how they could co-operate together in the future, prior to the event it had been touted as the first step towards setting up a new European Parliament group of alternative right-wing parties.
According to El Independiente, Vox also invited France’s Marine Le Pen, Martin Helme from Estonia, and Giorgia Meloni to the current meeting in Madrid, but AFP writes that Matteo Salvini will again not be present.
The summit will take place on January 28-29, writes El Independiente. Abascal has repeatedly stated that Hungary and Poland are two of Vox’s two “favorite allies,” and that his party is “in perfect harmony” with the leaders of these countries on the issues of border protection, family policy, and protecting national sovereignty.
[444][Photo: Santiago Abascal and Viktor Orbán]
