BNP in talks to form far right EU parliament group

British National Party leader Nick Griffin has confirmed that he is intalks with four other parties about forming a new group in the European parliament.

One is Jobbik, the far right Hungarian party, which won 14.8 per cent of the vote in the Hungarian European elections.

The party, also known as the Movement for a Better Hungary, won nearly as many votes as the ruling socialists, securing three seats in parliament.

Others involved in the negotiations, Griffin told this website, are France's Front National, which won three seats, including the re-election of its veteran leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Belgium's Vlaams Belang and Ataka, the nationalist Bulgarian party.

Griffin said, "We need at least 25 members from seven different member states to form a group and we are not there at present.

"However, there is no doubt that we will be able to wield a lot more influence if we can form a group than if we do not."

He said the "first aim" when parliament resumes next month will be to "cooperate" with these and other "interested partners" on an informal basis.

"For example, we will seek cooperation on the voting positions we will take in committee meetings. Other than that, we will have to wait and see if we can form a group."

Being part of a group is crucial in terms of power as it entitles members to EU funding, a party office, administrative staff and, crucially, the right to vote in committees which are the nerve centre of parliament.

Griffin, in a wide-ranging interview, was in Brussels for two days this week to set up preliminary negotiations.

The Cambridge-educated politician, who was flanked by two bodyguards, said that he and Andrew Brons, the other BNP member elected as an MEP, will each have two staff in Brussels.

He said they also planned to donate 10 per cent of their MEP gross salary of €7,665 per month to "local community use" in their respective UK constituencies.

"We earn enough as it is and I would hope this might shame other MEPs into doing the same thing," said Griffin.

He said he was "untroubled" at the prospect of other mainstream political groups refusing to cooperate with Brons and himself, but threatened legal action if public broadcasters such as the BBC refuse to give the party coverage.

The BBC's Brussels correspondent Shirin Wheeler said last week the corporation was currently reviewing the coverage it will give to the BNP in light of the European election results.

Griffin, in his first visit to the European parliament, said, "There is no doubt we are currently hot news so I would have thought it is in the media's interest to give us as much coverage as possible."

Brons, a 61-year-old retired politics and law lecturer, said he still had to "pinch himself" that he had been elected.

"I used to teach European affairs to students and now here I am at the centre of it all as an MEP," he said.

Both he and Griffin said they hoped the "demonization" of the party and themselves since the election would soon subside.

"I hope others here realise that we are ordinary people, not devils," said Griffin.

However UK Labour MEP Claude Moraes, his party's deputy leader in Brussels, said, "Fascists in parliament where I sit have long wanted members from the UK to join this transnational group so for those reasons there is deep concern that we have now crossed that threshold."

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