Populist Leaders: EU ‘Existential Threat’ to Europe, ‘Drowning It in Migrants to Destroy Our Diversity’

Populist leaders meeting in Prague this weekend said the EU is “killing Europe”, as they agreed to work on building an alternative model of cooperation that respects the continent’s peoples and cultures.

Marine Le Pen of France’s Front National and Dutch Islam critic Geert Wilders were among the populist politicians who met in the Czech capital to discuss their continent’s future at a conference entitled ‘For a Europe of Sovereign Nations”.

The Party for Freedom (PVV) firebrand fingered mass migration and “Islamisation” as the top threats to Europe, and asserted that the Netherlands would be safer and more prosperous outside the EU, according to the Associated Press.

Pointing to demographic projections of Islam in Europe highlighted earlier this month by a Pew Report — which, writing in Breitbart London, he described as a “catastrophe in the making” — Wilders congratulated the Czech Republic for refusing to bow down to Brussels’ demand that third world migrants be spread throughout the bloc.

“In 30 or 50 years’ time, the Czech Republic will be surrounded by countries where 20 percent of the population will be Muslim,” he said.

“That is as if the Czech Republic became a Gaza Strip. We need to prevent mass migration even if it means building a wall.”

The Dutch populist praised U.S. President Donald J. Trump for moving to “restrict legal immigration instead of expanding it”, and urged Europe to call forth the “courage” to “introduce travel bans” and “repatriate the illegal immigrants”.

His sentiments were echoed by Le Pen, who told reporters that parties in the EU Parliament’s Europe of Nations and Freedom grouping were united in their opposition to both mass migration and the European Union, the latter of which she accused of “killing Europe” in its quest to bring an end to the continent’s nation states.

“The European Union is a disastrous organization which is leading our continent to destruction through dilution by drowning it in migrants, by the negation of our respective countries, by the draining of our diversity,” she argued.

Hosting the gathering in Prague was Eurosceptic, anti-Islam Czech party, Freedom and Direct Democracy — whose leader, Tomio Okamura, said the parties were defending European values.

While it was widely reported that European populists were “rejected” by “peaceful protesters” who “marched against the politics of hatred and fear”, media outlets did note the high level of security — including a police helicopter and dozens of officers — required to protect the conference, while “Islamic radicals openly called for the death of Wilders”.