The Current Position of the EU Parliament’s Swing to the Right

TCN
June 4, 2014

tower-painting-parliament
Coincidence?

UKIP’s EFD group presently has six official member parties and the Wilders/Le Pen group EAF presently has five official member parties. Both need to have members from at least seven different nations to receive a share of funding.

There are still fifty five MEPs who are still officially unaffiliated. It was reported in the media that Alternative For Deutschland’s [AfD] seven MEPs were joining the Tory group instead of EFD. However, AfD now says they have not decided.

Some of the parties that may join either EFD or EAF include Alternative for Germany, Polish Congress of the New Right, Swedish Democrats, Independent Greeks, and the Italian Five Star Movement. It is also still possible that members of the Tory led group ECR could defect to the UKIP group. At least one ECR group, the Latvian National Alliance, could defect to the EAF.

EFD and EAF both say they are still confident they will meet the requirements to receive funding.

There are certain countries where “center-right” parties tend to be much further to the right than the average. These include Italy, Hungary, and Croatia, and possibly others.

There are 751 MEPs total.

0519-OFARRIGHT-graphic_full_600
Europe’s move to the Right was even more successful than was originally predicted, as can be seen from this.

EU Makeup:

Centrist and Left of Center: 357, 47.5%

S&D (Socialists)

189 Members

ALDE (Centrists, Moderates, Center-Left)

65 Members

G-EFA (Left-wing, center-left combined with center-left to center-right regionalism/secessionist parties)

52 Members

GUE/NGL (Hard-core Marxist, Communist, Far-Left)

51 Members

Right of Center: 377, 50.2%

EPP (Center-Right, Neo-Con, Christian Democrats, Some parties more conservative than others)

220 Members, 29.3%

ECR (Tory led “soft-Euroskeptic,” some parties much more conservative than Tories)

47 Members

EFD (Conservative, Anti-Immigration Euroskeptic group led by UKIP, Membership expected to grow)

34 Members

EAF (Right-wing Euroskeptic group led by Le Pen and Wilders, Membership expected to grow)

38 Members

New Right-wing parties that are still unaffiliated (These are expected to affiliated with either EFD or EAF)

At least 14 Members

Wildcard (Italian 5 Star, Billed as an anti-corruption centrist party, attracted much of the Italian right-wing vote, negotiating with EFD)

17 Members

Unaffiliated Militant Far-Right (Three parties that will probably remain unaffiliated because of “bad boy” image)

7 Members

Other New Unaffiliated Parties with one person each (Ranging from Center-left to Center-right)

17 Members 2.2%

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Now the parties have to form alliances with one another to produce a block, which will ensure that they get extra funding and can sit on the committees that make some of the decisions.