“For the Patriots, it would have been much easier just to vote against the return regulation,” she said, as the group opposes migration policy being drawn in Brussels, believing that’s a job for national capitals. “But we realized, if we do not cooperate now to form this right-wing majority, the left-wing proposal that would then have a majority would be much, much worse.”
A willingness to play the Brussels political game is unusual for a group made up of ideologically diverse nationalist parties united mainly by their desire to repatriate powers from Brussels to capitals, and which have traditionally shown little interest in working in the EU institutions.
Yet Ehlers pushed back against the idea that the far-right camp’s strategy to Brussels has changed: “We are now the third-largest group, and so we can actually change things, and so the pragmatism, I think, would have always been there also in earlier groups, had the opportunity been there to participate.”
Working together?
The EPP says there is no structured alliance or coordination with the Patriots, insisting the far-right group supports its positions without any quid pro quo.
Ehlers rejects that.
“If they think people believe that, they are extremely naïve,” she said. Ehlers cited the EU’s deportations law as an example, saying the EPP adopted several demands from the Patriots and the other far-right group in the Parliament, the Europe of Sovereign Nations.