Populists Barred From Participating in EU Parliament Election Debate

The two main right-wing groups in the EU Parliament have accused the European Broadcasting Union of political censorship after being barred from participating in the main debate before the bloc heads to the polls next month.

The populist Identity and Democracy (ID) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) have been informed that they will be excluded from the May 23rd debate in Brussels over a parliamentary dispute surrounding the “Spitzenkandidat” (lead candidate) system, an informal rule demanding European Political Parties nominate their candidate for Commission President before the Parliamentary elections.

The two right-wing parties believe that this undermines the role of national governments, represented by the European Council, in selecting their preferred Commission presidential candidate as is their right under the terms of the Maastricht Treaty and therefore the informal and non-binding Spitzenkandidat system artificially empowers Brussels. In light of this disagreement over parliamentary procedure, the ID and ECR have both opted this year not to select a lead candidate for the top Commission post currently held by Ursula von der Leyen.

They argued that the publicly-funded European Broadcasting Union (EBU) — of Eurovision fame/infamy — in using the dispute as a pretext to bar them from the debate represented the censorious nature of the EU and the preferential treatment given to neo-liberal centrists and left-wing socialists, who have also used their power to enact a cordon sanitaire (sanitary cordon) to block populists and conservatives from key positions throughout the EU governmental infrastructure.

Furthermore, the continued viability of the Spitzenkandidat system is not a foregone conclusion, with it being deeply undermined following the 2019 EU Parliament elections by the EU Council backing Ursula von der Leyen despite the “lead candidate” to win the most seats being European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber, who under the convention would therefore be the rightful Spitzenkandidat. This has led to suggestions that the entire process is essentially moot given that it is not legally binding by treaty.

The decision by the EBU is also questionable given that a Commission President debate took place last month in the Netherlands during which the ID faction was allowed to be represented by Dutch MEP Anders Vistisen and Valeriu Ghilețchi, the President of the European Christian Political Movement, stood as a member of the ECR, despite neither being selected as a so-called “Spitzenkandidat”.

Responding to the censorious act, Vistisen said that “the culturally radical elite and the state-funded media hate us – because they fear us – and the millions of citizens we represent on the European continent.”

The move to prevent the two main right-wing parties from debating comes amid a growing consensus that there will be a significant shift to the right in the Europan Parliament elections in June, with the neo-liberal European Council on Foreign Relations predicting that eurosceptic/populist parties will come out on top in at least 9 countries, bolstered by growing anger over the cost of living crisis, mass migration, and the failures of the green agenda to insulate the bloc from external pressures on the energy market and for its negative impacts on European farmers, whose protests have served as a rallying cry for the elections.

Such is the scale of the rightward turn amongst European peoples that Ursula von der Leyen has reportedly begun courting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her conservative ECR in a bid to cling on to power and secure a second term as Commission chief.

The latest act of open censorship from the EU comes in the wake of local leftist politicians in Brussels controversially attempting to shut down the National Conservatism (NatCon) last month.

The district mayor openly bragged about shutting down the “far-right” conference, which would include mainstream politicians from former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, to Brexit leader Nigel Farage, and even the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán.

In stunning scenes, armed police surrounded the venue of the political conference, preventing politicians including members of the European Parliament, such as France’s Patricia Changnon, from entering the building, sparking criticism from centrist Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.

Although a judge ultimately quashed the order to shut down the conference — for violating the Belgian constitution’s freedom of speech and association protections — Changnon told Breitbart London that she thought the incident showed that elites in Europe are “petrified of what’s around the corner… the people taking back control and defending their rights.”

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