By Anthony Fletcher - 6th June 2007
Volen Siderov, chairman of the far right Bulgarian nationalist party Attack, has claimed that some aspects of Europe are now 'more totalitarian than under the Soviet Union'.
“Multinationals are destroying smaller economies,” he said at a Brussels press conference organised by Bruno Gollnisch - the chairman of the Identity, Sovereignty and Tradition (IST) group - in order to highlight the group’s growth following the Bulgarian elections.
“I would call this neo-colonialism.”
Siderov said that in Europe, IST would be “combative in a constructive sense” to defend national characteristics and sovereignty.
Gollnisch said that the expansion of the IST parliamentary grouping, which now includes Bulgarian MEPs Slavtcho Pentchev Binev and Desislav Slavov Chukolov, underlined the fact that the far right movement was “clearly going in the right direction”.
“A number of people reckoned we’d have a fleeting existence, but we’ve now expanded following the Bulgarian elections, and now, I think, are no longer the smallest group,” he said.
Gollnisch added that the party would increase its influence in the heart of global political debate which had moved from being about differences over running the economy to differences over identity.
“What do we want? A totally globalised world that does not take into account individual details, or a world where every nation’s unique cultural heritage is maintained and recognised?”
The IST, which was formed in January and has just enough MEPs to form a parliamentary group, aims to cement its position as defender of Christian values, the family and European civilisation.
Members include Andreas Moelzer, once ejected from Austria's far-Right Freedom Party for extremism, and Bulgarian MEP Dimitar Stoyanov who was criticised earlier this year by his UK colleague Ashley Mote for saying he opposed the “Jewish establishment”.
Gollnisch himself was fined in January by a court in Lyon for questioning the holocaust.
However, as deputy leader of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, Gollnisch insisted that the far-right was in touch with Europe.
He suggested at the conference that French president Nicolas Sarkozy won the national election through his adoption of some of Le Pen’s policies.
“We feel certain we represent a real force in Europe,” he said.
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