Spanish firebrand Santiago Abascal has been chosen as the first chairman of the Patriots for Europe party, which will be the third-largest faction in the EU Parliament.
The leader of Spain’s populist-nationalist VOX party accepted the nomination to head up the recently formed Patriots for Europe as representatives gathered for the party’s general assembly in Paris on Saturday.
Abascal, a staunch critic of mass migration, globalism, and socialism, will thus be responsible for leading parties from 11 different countries with 86 MEPs, including those from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary, Matteo Salvini’s Lega in Italy, and Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in The Netherlands.
Due to a right-wing surge in the EU Parliament elections over the summer, Patriots for Europe can boast the third-most members in Strasbourg, only trailing behind the establishment-left Socialists & Democrats (SD) with 136 and the neoliberal European People’s Party (EPP) at 182.
The elevation of Abascal to the head of Patriots for Europe came after his VOX party withdrew from the Giorgia Meloni-led European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR) in July. Abascal said at the time that Meloni would remain a “friend and ally” but that he felt it was necessary to form a “large group” to “very forcefully” pushback against the leftist and supposedly centre-right alliance in the EU Parliament.
In his speech in Paris, the Spaniard said per Vozpopuli that “so far only the enemies of all the beautiful, which is the love of our homeland, our freedom, our traditions, families, have worked together.” Therefore, he argued, the only response can be a united front: “We have a duty to promote a total and global response to globalism… the good must be united.”
Abascal pointed to President-Elect Donald Trump’s recent victory in this month’s elections in the United States as a sign that there are “winds of change” in the air and that the Patriots of Europe must “take advantage of this opportunity” and launch a defence of the nation-state against globalist encroachment.
“We cannot let this historic moment pass,” he said, calling for efforts to “achieve alternative majorities to those that Europe has been suffering at the hands of a stateless federalism and, which, sometimes, has acquired almost Soviet tints.”
Referencing the prosecution of Marine Le Pen in France and Matteo Salvini in Italy, as well as attempts by Brussels to “blackmail” Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary by withholding EU funds, Abascal warned that the globalist left is seeking to “silence millions of Europeans”.
“They want to steal the voice of the Europeans and they do so by attacking their most popular leaders. And they do it in an increasingly cruel and more forceful way, destroying something as European as freedom of expression,” he said.
The Spanish leader also warned of the “ruinous ideologies” being pushed onto the public, particularly into the minds of school children, including wokeness and “climate fanaticism and the green dictatorship that destroy our industries and our countryside and impoverish our peoples.”
In response to the selection of the VOX chief, Viktor Orbán said: “Congratulations to Santiago Abascal on his election as President of the Patriots of Europe Party. The Brussels elite want to silence us, but we will not give in! We don’t represent Brussels bureaucrats, we represent the European people. Our mandate is clear: protecting European families, stopping migration and restoring Europe’s competitiveness.”
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