The Czech opposition party ANO will establish a new group in the European Parliament (EP), party leader and former PM Andrej Babis announced during an interview with CNN Prima News and on his social media profiles today.
Babis said the agenda of the new group would be sovereignty, security, opposition to “illegal migration”, and changes to the European Green Deal. He has not yet indicated which other parties will participate in the new group, but said further details will follow next week.
Each political group in the European Parliament, in which MEPs are associated according to their political affiliation, must have at least 23 MEPs from seven EU countries. ANO, which won the European elections in the Czech Republic, will have seven of the 21 Czech MEPs.
Last week, Babis announced that ANO would leave the liberal Renew Europe group, as well as the ALDE European party, arguing it would not be able to fulfil its programme in this group.
According to Renew Europe group leader Valerie Hayer, ANO’s departure is a long-awaited divorce. She said ANO had chosen a populist path incompatible with the values and identity of Renew Europe.
“We went to the (EP) elections to fight illegal migration and to change the Green Deal, which is destroying European industry and agriculture and negatively impacting our citizens,” Babis said last week. “Based on the negotiations, we came to the conclusion that Renew and ALDE simply have different positions to ANO.”
Babis reiterated today that ANO had tried to push through its programme, but had failed in Renew Europe and ALDE. Because of this, the party has decided to establish a new group in the European Parliament, he added.
“This will be the first time in history that a Czech political entity will establish a new (EP) group,” Babis told CNN Prima News. The details will be announced next week, he said, probably on Monday.
“We will see, it will be exciting how many other MEPs we can convince,” Babis added.
Media reports have previously suggested that ANO is conducting talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the Slovak government parties, PM Robert Fico’s Smer-SD and President Peter Pellegrini’s Hlas-SD, about forming a new EP group.
At present, Renew Europe has 75 MEPs, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) has 188 seats, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) 136 seats and the conservative nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) 83. The far-right Identity and Democracy Group (ID) has 58 seats, the Greens/European Free Alliance 54 and the Left Party 39. 42 newly elected MEPs do not belong to any of the previous EP groups, and 45 others are also unaffiliated.
The existing or new EP groups must announce their names and composition by 15 July. The constituent plenary session of the new European Parliament, made up of 720 MEPs, will take place in Strasbourg from 16-19 July. They will elect their president and 14 vice-presidents, quaestors, chairs and deputy chairs of committees and delegations.
