France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen said today from Brussels that she doubts the EU’s intention to tighten its immigration policy while welcoming the change in attitude of some states and bloc leaders on the issue.
“When Germany starts to reintroduce controls on its borders, when the countries of the north start to say ‘stop’, it’s because they have heard what we have been saying for years,” Le Pen said on her arrival for a meeting of the Patriots for Europe, the third largest political group in the European Parliament.
“A new wind is blowing in Europe,” Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders also asserted for his part when asked about it by reporters before the meeting.
The meeting, the first since the formation of this new group in the European Parliament after the European elections in June, is being held in the Hungarian consulate building, a few hundred meters away from the venue of the summit of the leaders of the 27 EU member states, which will focus on the issue of migration.
Nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban and far-right Italian Deputy Prime Minister Mateo Salvini are also attending the meeting along with the leaders of Spain’s far-right Vox party and the Belgian Vlaams Belang.
Although some European leaders are “coming out a little bit of denial” in the face of the “inequalities” caused by the arrival of migrants, “the Commission, ideologically, wants this immigration. I don’t trust it to settle the problem,” Le Pen said.
The French politician added that she wanted EU asylum requests to be handled by the embassies or consulates of the 27 member states “in the countries of origin (of migrants) or in the countries of transit.”
“It would be much more efficient,” he argued, “so that those who arrive on EU territory are those who are allowed to enter.”
For his part, Jordan Bardela, president of the National Rally, Le Pen’s party, called for the EU to put pressure on home countries to accept the return of their citizens who are not entitled to international protection and are being deported.
“Not a single visa should be given to a country that does not want to accept back its citizens, the ratio must change, otherwise we will be overwhelmed,” the French MEP said.
The rise of the far-right in the European elections led to the creation of the Patriots for Europe group, which with 86 MEPs became the third largest political group in the European Parliament after the European People’s Party (right-wing, 188 MEPs) and the Socialists and Democrats (136 MEPs).
