BRUSSELS
France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders have announced on Tuesday the grouping of far right parties in the European Parliament.
The formation of an anti-EU and anti-immigration bloc called Europe of Nations and Freedoms includes European MPs from Wilders’s Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), Italian Northern League and the Flemish nationalist group Vlaams Belang.
"I am happy to announce the beginning of the group Europe of Nations and Freedoms," Le Pen told reporters at the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday.
The group will thus be able to receive EU funding and increase its influence in the European Parliament.
"It’s the beginning of our liberation," Wilders told reporters at the European Parliament on Tuesday.
"We will defend the interest of our own people we will defend our sovereignty [and] fight against mass immigration," Wilders added.
A group in the European parliament must have at least 25 members from seven nations to get a full standing in the 751-seat legislature. By itself, Le Pen’s National Front has 23 seats.
The formation of Europe of Nations and Freedoms comes as EU interior ministers gathered in Luxembourg on Tuesday to discuss how to deal with the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean as well as how sharing asylum seekers across the 28-nation bloc.
