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July 2, 2004/Tamuz 13 5764, Vol. 56, No.41
Far-right growth in E.U. Parliament could solidify faction
PHILIP CARMEL
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
PARIS - Self-Defense, the Peasants' Party and the League of Polish Families might be unfamiliar names for most European politicians, but all three far-right parties are set to enter the European Parliament following elections last month.
The three parties polled close to 40 percent of the vote in Poland, the largest of 10 new countries that joined the European Union in May. If one or more of the parties chooses to ally with other far-right groups in Europe, they may be able to create a formal faction in the Parliament.
Until now, the far-right has failed to break into the European Parliament because it either was unable to muster support in a sufficient number of countries or could not overcome mutual animosity between its various components. Now, though, with nationalist, xenophobic and sometimes openly anti-Semitic parties helped by exceptionally low turnouts and good vote-getting in some Eastern European countries, the goal of a united European far-right faction could become a reality.
That would require at least 19 legislators from at least five countries. If they can meet that standard, the parties would get official E.U. funding, offices, cars and a certain degree of respectability.
The results of the June 10-13 European elections show that 66 legislators from across Europe will not be aligned with any of the current official parliamentary groups. Around 40 of them can be described as xenophobic, and some of them as openly racist and anti-Semitic.
Among mainstream political parties, virtually all ran national rather than pan-European campaigns, but one small party in the Paris region ran for a different, hypothetical country: Palestine.
The Euro-Palestine Party aimed to elect a spokesperson for Palestine in the European Parliament. It ran a virulently anti-Israel campaign but failed miserably, garnering less than 2 percent of the vote in Ile de France, the region comprising the Paris metropolitan area, which has a large Muslim population.
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