The European Parliament (EP) will have as many as three far-right, Eurosceptic political groups in the new convocation, as the agreement on the creation of the latest such parliamentary group was confirmed by the representatives of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the leader of the Czech populist party Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) Tomio Okamura.
The decision to unite 28 MEPs from nine European Union (EU) members into a political group should be announced during the evening of July 10, the media reported.
The formation of a new political group in the EP requires at least 23 deputies from seven countries.
As the German portal Welt (Welt) reports, the AfD, which has the most deputies in the new group, proposed that it be called "Europe of sovereign nations".
The AfD, which is under the supervision of the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order due to its extreme views in several German provinces, will have 14 deputies in the new group. Velt also reports that the head of the new political group will be the AfD MP from the eastern state of Thuringia, René Aust.
The new far-right alliance is likely to include Tomi Okamura's Czech Freedom and Direct Democracy, Erik Zemur's French national-conservative party Reconquet, Bulgaria's Preporod, Poland's Confederation - Freedom and Independence, Spain's Se Acabo la Fiesta (The Party is Over), Slovakia's Republic, the Hungarian radical right Movement Our Homeland (Mi Hazánk Mozgalom) and the Lithuanian Union of Peoples and Justice.
An AfD spokesman said the new faction would remain open to other parties wanting to join.
Tomio Okamura, the leader of the Czech SPD, which has one MEP, said that the new group programmatically is against the European Green Agreement, immigration and the Islamization of Europe, the Czech news agency CTK reported.
Almost all the parties that in the previous convocation made up the far-right, Eurosceptic political group Identity and Democracy have now moved to the new, larger Patriots for Europe group, which is gathered around the Fidesz party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Okamura told the International Radio Prague that his SPD rejects it, because all the former members of the IDF voted for the Green Agreement, and until recently supported migration to Europe.
The Patriots for Europe group includes, along with Fidesz, the ANO party of former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and the French far-right National Gathering, which has as many as 30 MPs. That group has the third largest number of representatives in the European Parliament and has overtaken the strongest right-wing and Eurosceptic group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which is led by the Brothers of Italy, Prime Minister Djordje Meloni, and the Polish party Pravo i Pravda.
AfD did not join the new Patriots for Europe group mainly because of the reservations of certain parties in it, German media write.
AfD has 15 deputies in the new convocation of the European Parliament, but until recently the leader of the MEPs of that party, Maximilian Krach, was expelled from the party after the recent elections due to neo-Nazi statements.
Due to the statements of Maksimilian Krah, who is still an MEP, on the eve of the European Parliament elections, all AfD MEPs were excluded from the Identity and Democracy group at the time.
Krach was expelled from the party after the election, but entry into the Patriots for Europe for the AfD remained blocked, although in terms of political ideas it is very close to many parties in that group, the media write.
The top of the AfD, according to the German agency DPA, advocates the theory that European governments, primarily Germany, are preventing Viktor Orbán from cooperating with the AfD.
"Patriots for Europe parties are subject to political, foreign policy and foreign-economic pressures that we have to take into account at the moment," said AfD head Alice Weidel.
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