Nigel Farage has rejected accusations by Marine Le Pen, leader of the French anti-EU Front National, of using “dirty tricks” and pulling “political stunts” that left her unable to form an official group at the European Parliament, as as reported in Le Figaro.
A spokesman for Farage, whose UKIP negotiators last week managed to secure the necessary MEPs from seven different countries to form a group, today told Breitbart London that “Marine Le Pen was free to contact all other MEPs in the European Parliament, and UKIP did not hinder her in any way.”
“Other parties were happy to come and form a group with UKIP. The reason that Front National did not get a group was because some parties were uneasy in its company.”
Le Pen’s accusation came as she and her right-wing allies from three other countries, including Geert Wilders’ Dutch Freedom Party, face losing €22m (£17.6) in public subsidies for political activities because they have failed to form a group.
If Le Pen cannot sign up enough MEPs, Front National and its three allied parties will not only lose millions of euros, they will be denied full representation on committees, extra speaking time and other privileges.
In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, Le Pen said Farage had only managed to form his group because he had gone into alliance with an “unpredictable” Beppe Grillo and the Italian anti-establishment Five Star Movement, and Joëlle Bergeron, an “unstable” French MEP who defected from Le Pen’s party after her election on the Front National list last month.
In a swipe at Farage, Le Pen said: “We are not looking for publicity stunts. We want strong and lasting alliances.”
She said she fell short in part because the Front National rejected an alliance with MEPs from the Polish Congress of the New Right (KNP), a radical libertarian anti-EU party that came from nowhere to finish fourth in last month’s elections.
Le Pen, whose party supports the traditional French welfare state and protectionism, said statements by the KNP leadership “were inconsistent with our thinking and political project” and the party was “too extreme” and the party leader, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, had denied the Holocaust
Korwin-Mikke caused fury in Poland earlier this year when he said that prisoners in the Nazi German WWII Auschwitz death camp were better off than some unemployed in Poland: “They had three meals a day served and were guaranteed work.”
Any association with a party whose leader made comments such as that would be toxic for Le Pen, who has had to try to distance herself and the Front National from recent anti-Semitic remarks by her father which led to the party again being called “neo-Nazi.”
Le Pen says she is confident that she will form a group: “We will get there in a week, or in a month or two.”
The first session of the new parliament will take place in Strasbourg on July 1-3.
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