Tense scenes unfolded in the European Parliament as members of The Left protested against a deportation project that was reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Yesterday, Left MEPs staged a peaceful protest outside a conference hosted by the extreme-right Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) group, which focused on “remigration.”
The term “remigration” is used to advocate for policies involving forced expulsions and mass deportations of people of immigrant origin from Europe. It is a slogan increasingly used by the extremist party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is the leader of ESN.
Interestingly, the conference was broadly supported by the far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) group of Marine Le Pen. Hermann Tertsch, an MEP elected with the Spanish VOX and vice-president of PfE, participated in the three-member panel. During the protest, MEPs from Le Pen’s party, Rassemblement National, were seen yelling profanities at the demonstrators before leaving the scene.
However, it is curious how Le Pen allowed the members of PfE to participate in such a racist event, given the fact that when a similar event was organised by AfD members in Germany in January 2024, she protested against and broke relations with the German party. Le Pen’s opposition to the racist and neo-Nazi views of AfD excluded the party from the PfE and forced it to establish a more radical group in the Parliament, the ESN.
Was Tertsch’s participation signal that Le Pen’s group flirts with the AfD?
Moreover, on 12 February, Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, whose party Fidesz is among the founders of PfE, received AfD co-chair Alice Weidel in Budapest—another meeting between the Patriots and the extremists of AfD.
Speaking from the European Parliament floor today in Strasbourg, The Left co-chair Manon Aubry (La France Insoumise, France) said: “The event organised yesterday by the ESN group calling for the deportation of people from Europe shows the real face of the extreme-right. It is a racist and xenophobic project. The Left protested this event peacefully. And from now on they will find us standing in their way every single time. Every time that they organise racist events in our European Parliament, they will find us standing in their way because racism has no place inside this Parliament or out.”
