Poland’s former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki from the conservative PiS party in the ECR has also left the door open to a big tie-up on the right, and there is wide speculation that Hungary’s Viktor Orbán will affiliate his Fidesz party there after the election.
All of these mergers and reconfigurations are complex and vulnerable to post-election deals and disagreements. The Czechs and Romanians in the ECR don’t want to team up with nationalist Hungarians sympathetic to the Kremlin, for example. Major political gymnastics and resets would be required to get the AfD back in the tent.
While losing the AfD has dented ID’s numbers, it has opened doors for Le Pen. The AfD and Le Pen’s National Rally party have long been considered as too extreme for cooperation — outside a so-called cordon sanitaire created by the pro-Europe mainstream.
Cooperation with Meloni could, therefore, be a double win for Le Pen. They could build a hefty voting bloc from which to influence Europe’s agenda and bring National Rally more into the mainstream right in the eyes of the public, something Le Pen craves before France’s 2027 election.
In the interview, Le Pen denied severing ties with the AfD was a cynical move intended to facilitate new alliances in Europe.
On Meloni, she said: “I believe that she and I are in agreement on the essential issues, including taking back control of our countries.”
