Orban and Salvini’s plan to ‘make Europe great again’

Change is coming in the European Parliament. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Polish leader Mateusz Morawiecki, and Italian Lega party leader Matteo Salvini held a meeting in Budapest this month to discuss the establishment of a new, conservative European Parliamentary alliance. Forged after the withdrawal of the Hungarian Fidesz party from the centre-right European People’s Party, Salvini claimed the new coalition is intended to ‘make Europe great again’. The trio have agreed to meet for further discussions in Warsaw in May.

The aping of Donald Trump’s slogan suggests an attempt to replicate his brand of conservatism in Europe. Advocating a ‘European renaissance, or an alternative vision to a bureaucratic EU which has drifted away from its citizens’, the new movement has emerged following major disputes between three countries and the EU over cultural issues, such as LGBT rights and migration. Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán has claimed the coalition will focus on ‘freedom, family, Christianity and sovereignty’ – an attempt to reassert conservative values in opposition to the progressivism of the EU’s liberal western and northern members.