Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who co-founded the Patriots for Europe group in the EU parliament in late June 2024, has seen the group rise to the third-largest force in the chamber.
Announcements have been streaming in all week of new parties joining on a daily basis, and sometimes hourly basis, bringing the party to 84 seats.
Today, France’s National Rally joined, making Marine Le Pen’s party the largest bloc in the new EU grouping. With 30 MEPs joining up, it marked a major political coup for Orbán and dramatically boosted the political clout the party will wield in Brussels.
Later in the day, Lega, the party of Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini joined the Patriots for Europe group as well. Along with a number of smaller parties, the group now has 84 MEPs from 12 countries, thus meeting the criteria to form a new political bloc.
Orbán’s party was initially mocked by the international press, with many commentators noting it did not have enough countries to be an official political grouping in the EU parliament. However, that quickly changed, with parties signing up one after another.
Notably, Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) reportedly rejected Orbán’s governing Fidesz party from joining the group due to his pro-peace stance in the war in Ukraine. The Patriots of Europe has now eclipsed her grouping in a short time, knocking the ECR into fourth place in terms of seats in the European parliament.
MEPs who belong to the new political grouping took to X to celebrate the rapid growth of the party.
