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New members boost EU far right

By CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley

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Romania's arrival in the European Union has had one unexpected effect -- it has handed a significant bonus to the forces of the far right in the European Parliament.

To become an official "group" in the parliament -- status which brings speaking rights, committee positions and significant funding -- political alliances have to assemble at least 20 members from six countries.

The far right managed to get over that hurdle for a while back in the 1980s, but have not done so since.

But when the 785-member parliament met in Strasbourg this week there were 35 new deputies from Romania and 18 from Bulgaria, the two countries which joined the EU on January 1. Between them they have provided enough far right MEPs to enable the bloc to claim the status of a party grouping.

The key has been the arrival of five members of the Greater Romania Party, led by the hardline nationalist Corneliu Vadim Tudor, once court poet to the dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, and a single deputy, Dimitar Stoyanov, from Bulgaria's anti-Roma, anti-Turk Ataka party.

Stoyanov, at 23, is the youngest member of the European Parliament. He denies being anti-Semitic but the flavor of his politics can be gleaned from his accusations that Roma people sell 12-year-old girls into prostitution and from his declaration: "There are a lot of powerful Jews with a lot of money who are paying the media to form the social awareness of the people."

Vadim Tudor has been quoted as saying: "The Hungarians, the Gypsies and the Jews have got all the power. Jews are like warts on a man's body."

The new Far Right grouping, which is calling itself ITS, for Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty, will be entitled to $1.3m in funding and will be led by Bruno Gollnisch of France, deputy leader of the National Front, who is currently awaiting a French court verdict on charges of denying the Holocaust.

He says the group will oppose immigration, Turkish accession to the EU and the recreation of an EU constitution. It will focus on "defending Christian values, the family and European civilization".

Gollnisch claims the group will speak for 23 million people in Europe who would otherwise be denied representation.

Other members of the group will include the French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and five more French deputies. Among the Italian rightists joining them is Alessandra Mussolini, the grand-daughter of Italy's wartime dictator. Also signed up is Frank Vanhecke, leader of the Flemish nationalist party Vlaams Belang in Belgium.

From Austria there is Andreas Molzer, a former assistant to the far right Freedom Party leader Joerg Haider, who is to be the group's general secretary.

Expected to join from the UK is Ashley Mote, a former member of UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party who was barred from that group in 2004 when he faced prosecution for social security fraud.

One irony of the new group's creation is that several of its members opposed the enlargement of the EU to include Romania and Bulgaria.

Members of more traditionalist parties are worried that the caucus will attract much greater media attention than its numbers merit, but maintaining coherence in a random grouping of narrow nationalists is likely to prove a problem.

As Jean Marie Le Pen once said when introducing some allies at a National Front rally: "They are all our friends --even though they hate each other."

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