Dutch poised to elect rightwing liberals as economic fears dominate

Polls suggest VVD win but raise questions over inclusion of anti-Islamic Geert Wilders in possible coalition government

Dutch voters are expected to elect their first liberal prime minister in almost a century tomorrow in an election dominated by the age of austerity looming over Europe.

As in Britain and Germany, the liberals are tipped to prosper at the expense of the two big parties that traditionally command the centre-right and the centre-left in the Netherlands: the Christian Democrats (CDA) and Labour (PvdA). Opinion polls indicate a triumph for the VVD, rightwing free-market liberals campaigning for swingeing public spending cuts, tighter rules on immigration and pragmatic scepticism towards the EU.

The election was called a year early after the collapse of the Christian Democrat-led coalition in February over the presence of Dutch troops in Afghanistan. But neither the Afghan war nor the explosive issue of Muslim immigration has played a prominent role in the campaign, meaning the anti-Islamic populist Geert Wilders has failed to capitalise. Wilders and his Freedom party are nonetheless predicted to double their share of seats to 18 in the 150-seat second chamber in The Hague, while coming in fourth. Only a few months ago, he was being tipped to win the election.

There was little doubt in The Hague today that Mark Rutte, the VVD leader, would be the new prime minister. In a highly fragmented proportional representation system, however, he will struggle to cobble together a coalition of the right. [Today's] vote will be followed by weeks, perhaps months, of horse-trading over possible coalitions.

One big question is whether the maverick Wilders will be offered a cabinet seat for the first time. Rutte's party is predicted to get 36 seats. His logical coalition partner, the CDA, are polling at 24. They need 76 for a majority. Wilders' seats would enable a majority for a rightwing coalition. Unlike in neighbouring Flanders, in Belgium, there is no cordon sanitaire erected by the mainstream around the extreme right, but the Dutch centre-right remains reluctant to go into government with Wilders.

The Islam-bashing leader wants a total stop to Muslim immigration and mosque-building, and a tax on Islamic headscarves. He has offered tacit support in parliament for a VVD-CDA minority government in return for tough immigration policies. A similar arrangement exists in Denmark, where the far right props up a rightwing government.

While Rutte looks certain to be the big winner, the main loser is expected to be the prime minister, Jan-Peter Balkenende. The CDA leader has headed three governments since 2002, all of which fell. The polls suggest a heavy defeat for his party, from 41 seats to around 23. The PvdA, under the new leadership of Job Cohen, the former mayor of Amsterdam, is also expected to lose a couple of seats.

The election is the first national ballot among the 16 eurozone countries since the eruption of the Greek debt crisis, which then escalated into a full-blown single currency emergency. The campaign has highlighted the degree to which voters' economic worries have hijacked the agenda. Rutte is promising spending cuts of €20bn (£16.5bno) euros to balance the budget over four years from a deficit currently of almost 7%.

In what has become almost routine in Dutch politics, he is also bashing Brussels, demanding, British-style, a slimming down of EU powers and their repatriation to member states, the possibility of British-style "opt-outs" from areas of EU legislation and a British-style big fight over the EU budget when it comes up for review from next year.

Guardian

Extreme right on the march in Europe's most tolerant nation

Geert Wilders speaks to supporters in Almere, where his
far-right Freedom Party was declared the surprise winner in local elections

Geert Wilders triumphs in Netherlands local elections

The anti-Islamist party led by Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders has triumphed in municipal polls in The Netherlands, opening the way for a political breakthrough for the far-right in general elections in June. Mr Wilders, known for his blond mane and due in London today to show his anti-Islam film in the House of Lords at the invitation of a Ukip peer, has campaigned for an immediate freeze on immigration and a ban on the wearing of Muslim headscarves in public. His Freedom Party was declared the surprise winner yesterday in Almere, a city just east of Amsterdam with a large immigrant population. It came second in The Hague, the only two cities where it chose to participate in the polls.

Wednesday's vote, in which the two main parties in the ruling coalition, the Labour Party (PvdA) and the Christian Democrats (CDA), suffered heavy losses, was the first electoral test since Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's government collapsed last month.

Tensions between the two sides and the recession played into Wilders' hands, while he refused to depart from his uncompromising stance on Muslim immigration or engage in mainstream political debates. If the local results were to translate nationally on 9 June, 46-year-old Wilders, who faces criminal charges for inciting hatred, could emerge as a kingmaker. An opinion poll yesterday also showed that the Freedom Party could take most seats in the national parliament in June.

Many Muslim residents in Almere were deeply shaken by the outcome, which gave the Freedom Party 21.6 per cent of votes. "I will stand here until my toes freeze," said Ayse Bayrak-de Jager, a Muslim student taking part in a silent protest outside the town hall. Her friend, Zaitoon Shah, added: "It's just appalling to think that I might not to be able to go to the library soon."

Kadriye Kacar, a 35-year-old IT student of Turkish origin, said: "I don't normally wear a headscarf but I decided to today as a sign of protest. Others are doing the same, until Wilders leaves. It's terrible. People are looking at us differently today, as if to say 'we won and you're going to leave'."

Celebrating in a rowdy local café late on Wednesday, a beaming Wilders told the city's Muslims not to be afraid "as long as they don't break the law", but he insisted that his party would refuse to go into talks with any parties that did not support his views. "We've always maintained that it would be unthinkable for us to work with them. We can talk about a number of policy issues like education and finance, but upholding the basic rights of all the people living here is non-negotiable," said Labour councillor Alphons Muurlink.

Many shoppers at the local market told Dutch television they felt ashamed for their city. "It's a big black stain, I don't even want to talk about it," said one elderly woman. The Dutch Muslim Party, which failed to gain any seats, said it was "a sad day" for the country. Leader Henny Kreeft said Wilders had traded on "baseless fears".

The collapse of the Dutch government was triggered by a deadlock over whether to keep some Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan after December, when a parliament decision to withdraw from the country comes into effect. The debacle was the last in a series of crises to have plagued the coalition, with the Christian Democrats locking horns with their Labour colleagues over retirement age and budget reform.

Independent

Blond bombshell Geert Wilders returns to Britain, looking for a fight

Geert Wilders - divisive, racist, Islamophobic and over-styled

Boyish, topped with a bouffant mane of bleached blond hair, cheerful and cherubic, Geert Wilders is the unlikely new face of the far Right in Europe. But appearances are deceptive. The leader of the Dutch anti-immigration Freedom Party has emerged as one of the most divisive politicians in Europe, the purveyor of a virulent brand of anti-Islamic rhetoric that calls for a tax on Islamic headscarves and a ban on the Koran, which he likens to Mein Kampf.

Mr Wilders is facing trial in a Dutch court for “inciting hatred”. Last year he was banned from Britain and turned away at Heathrow when he arrived here planning to show his short film, an incendiary anti-Islamic diatribe that the Dutch Prime Minister described as serving “no purpose other than to offend”.

On Friday, after successfully appealing against the Home Office ban, Mr Wilders will return to Britain at the invitation of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) to show his controversial film to an invited audience at the House of Lords. The English Defence League is expected to demonstrate in his support and Muslim groups are all but certain to mount protests.

To his enemies, the 46-year-old Dutchman is an old-fashioned racist demagogue in a new suit; a bottle-blond bigot. To his growing ranks of supporters he is a champion of free speech, a bulwark against what he calls “the Islamic invasion of Holland”. He may be dismissed by some as a crank but he is an increasingly powerful and popular one. On February 20 the Dutch centrist coalition Government collapsed, deeply divided over keeping troops in Afghanistan, paving the way for a general election in June in which the Freedom Party is expected to do extremely well. Polls suggest that the party will triple its tally of seats, becoming at least the second-biggest parliamentary party and quite possibly the overall winner. Mr Wilders is likely to be a key player in any coalition, with a profound impact on the political agenda.

Nicknamed “Mozart” on account of a platinum hairdo that looks strikingly like an 18th-century wig, Mr Wilders has played on the discords in Dutch society with virtuoso skill. As in Britain, many Dutch voters are alarmed by the scale of immigration, battered by the global economic crisis, culturally anxious and increasingly receptive to his grim warnings about a “tsunami of Islamification”.

The political heir to Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch populist politician who called for a halt to Muslim immigration and who was murdered in the 2002 election campaign, Mr Wilders has portrayed himself as the only politician in his country brave enough to stand up to militant Islam, a threat that he has compared to Nazism. “A century ago there were approximately 50 Muslims in the Netherlands. Today there are about one million. Where will it end? We are heading for the end of European civilisation,” he predicts. Promising strict limits on immigration, he has also called for a “head-rag tax” of €1,000 (£922) a year on Muslim women wearing headscarves.

In 2008 he released a 15-minute film entitled Fitna (the Arabic word for “strife”) which provoked outrage across the Muslim world: it opens with an image of the Koran, followed by footage of terrorist attacks and a litany of stonings, beheadings, honour killings, homophobia and child marriages. It ends, predictably, with the Danish cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked fury in 2006. Al-Qaeda is believed to have ordered the killing of Mr Wilders after the film was released. Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, has described the Dutch politician as “offensively anti-Islamic”. His most incendiary remarks are aimed at the Koran, which he calls a fascist book. “The Koran incites to hatred and calls for murder and mayhem,” Mr Wilders told the Dutch Parliament. “It is an absolute necessity that the Koran be banned for the defence and reinforcement of our civilisation and our constitutional state.”

In January a Dutch court ordered the public prosecutor to try Mr Wilders on charges of fomenting hatred and discrimination. Mr Wilders indicated that he would call witnesses in order to prove Koran-inspired violence, including Mohammed Bouyeri, the man convicted of murdering the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh in 2004.

Although he faces 16 months in prison if convicted, the trial represents a political goldmine for Mr Wilders and helps to explain his recent rise in opinion polls. If he is convicted he will paint himself as martyr to political correctness; if he is acquitted he will claim vindication. The trial has been suspended until after the election.

Inadvertently, Britain also did much to boost his standing in February last year by banning him from entering the country as an “undesirable person”, citing EU laws enabling member states to exclude someone whose presence could threaten public security. Mr Wilders loudly condemned Gordon Brown as “the biggest coward in Europe” and some 84 per cent of Dutch voters objected to the way that Mr Wilders had been ejected by Britain. The ban was later overturned by an asylum and immigration tribunal. On Friday, at the invitation of the UKIP leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Baroness Cox of Queensbury, he will show Fitna to MPs, peers and guests before giving a press conference at Westminster.

“The issue of militant Islam is the greatest issue facing our Judeo-Christian culture,” Lord Pearson said. “I don’t agree that the Koran should be banned but we want it discussed ... mild Muslims should stand up and debate their militant co-religionists.”

Mr Wilders has sought to distance himself and his party from the traditional standard-bearers of the extreme Right in Europe, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front in France and the late Jörg Haider of the Freedom Party in Austria. He has made no contact with the BNP. “My allies are not Le Pen and Haider,” he says. “I’m very afraid of being linked with the wrong rightist fascist groups.” His prime political role models are said to be Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill.

The son of a printer, Mr Wilders was raised Roman Catholic but is now an atheist. He worked in a Dutch social insurance agency before becoming a speechwriter and then MP for the liberal People’s Party, which he left in 2004 to form his own party. As a prime terrorist target he lives under 24-hour police guard, changing his location nightly. He is seldom seen in public and gives few interviews. Even contact with his wife, a Dutch-Hungarian former diplomat, is limited by security concerns, This way of life, under constant threat, is “a situation I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy”, he once remarked.

“They are trying to shoot him all the time,” says Lord Pearson, noting that Mr Wilders will be coming to Britain with five state-hired Dutch bodyguards. “He has a really, really tough existence.”

Mr Wilders opposes expansion of the EU, most particularly Turkish membership, and Dutch military deployment in Afghanistan, but the core of his message lies in an appeal to defend traditional Dutch culture against perceived encroachment by Islam. “Islam is the Trojan Horse in Europe,” he told the Dutch Parliament. “Stop all immigration from Muslim countries, ban all building of new mosques, close all Islamic schools, ban burkas and the Koran ... Stop Islamification. Enough is enough!”

Some polls suggest that after the June elections Mr Wilders may lead the biggest single parliamentary party, raising the prospect that a former fringe provincial politician with extreme views and peculiar hair could end up leading the country. “At some point it’s going to happen and then it will be a big honour to fulfil the post of prime minister,” he says. If that comes to pass it will mark both the triumph of a new, more subtle brand of right-wing politics in Europe, and the final demise of the stereotyped image of the Netherlands as a nation of bland liberal views and easygoing tolerance.

Itinerary

9am Geert Wilders will arrive at Heathrow, his second visit to Britain since overturning a ban by the former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. He declared his trip in October last year “a victory for free speech”

11am Screening of his film Fitna in a committee room of the House of Lords. The 17-minute film, which has been shown in the US Capitol, presents verses from the Koran alongside footage of terrorist attacks. The screening has been organised by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, leader of UKIP, and Baroness Cox, a former Conservative peer

12.30pm Press conference near Parliament. UKIP organisers are expecting protests

1pm The far-Right group the English Defence League plans a demonstration to welcome Mr Wilders to Britain. A UKIP source said: “That is what horrifies me more than anything else. Bring protective clothing.”

Times Online

Emergency protest this Friday

Protest this Friday 5th March, 12pm at House of Lords, Westminster.

UAF demo against the rally called by the EDL to greet and support Gert Wilders, the Islamaphobic Dutch MP. Wilders has been invted to the House of Lords by Malcolm Everard MacLaren Pearson, Leader of UKIP, to show his racist film Fitna.

Wilders was banned from coming to the UK before due to his racist remarks. He has described the Netherlands as facing a “tsunami of Islamification” – the Netherlands Musilim population is 6%. Also, he has said that a “head rag tax” should be issued on Muslim women who wear headscarves.

Protest against this racist coming to whip up race hatred and bolster the BNP.

The Wilders/EDL final solution...

Click on image to see it full-size

Here's an interesting proposal that you might have missed, apparently from the Dutch Freedom Party's Geert Wilders, he of the golden locks and rabid Islamophobia. Wilders suggests nuking Mecca as a 'rational deterrent to radical Islamists bent on using weapons of mass destruction against America and the west'.

Wilders' rationale for such an action - if there could be said to BE any rationale at all - is that Muslim's would find their faith so shattered by such an event that they would cease to be the problem that he perceives them to be to the future of the known universe.

Personally, it's a long time since I've heard anything quite so patently lunatic, but I would have expected the Muslim world to be galvanised into similarly lunatic responses instantly and possibly endlessly, and frankly, who could blame them?

Naturally, there are supporters of the idea and, on this occasion, it's members of the English Defence League - or at least, members of the EDL's forum. Here are a few responses:

'without getting all philosophical or going into numerous negatives as to why we shouldn't & scaremongering with the typical left-wing 'consequences' speeches........I'm all for it, my own personal studies into terrorism and guerrilla warfare is that the type of people we are up against only understand power, force, brute strength.'

'I'm not making this big speech on we gotta get real tough and nasty but initially in Iraq we we're treated with dubious respect by the locals, but as soon as the majority of the anti-westerner's see with their own two eyes just how soft we we're towards them {from their viewpoint}, the liberty's towards our troops started....'

'unfortunately force is something that some people understand more than others..'

'Nuke em all thats what I say.'

'I can't see the muzzies in this country going quietly into the night if we blew the crap out of that s**thole. But one well placed submarine would make it very difficult to find out who launched it...'

'I say the only way we will find out what will happen is to give it a try!'

'The best way to do this job, would be to pack a Boeing747 with high explosives and fly the plane by remote control right into the middle of mecca during the height of the hajj. I know that there is a flight restriction over mecca, but by the time the alarm was raised it would probably be to late. Remember the twin towers. Just fly it over as a normal shedualed flight. A 747 could carry one hell of a lot of explosives and the just deny any knowlege. Just another airline disaster. The effect would be apsolutly caterstrophic.'

The EDL claims not to be racist but simply opposed to extremism. One wonders then how it can justify allowing posts on its forum that advocate destroying millions of completely innocent members of a faith of which they disapprove, that just happens to be one practised mainly by immigrants and the children of immigrants.

Or perhaps the EDL is just what we've been saying it is all along - a bunch of violent racist nutters.

Thanks to gah gah for the heads-up.

Far-right alliance fails to get EU cash

The European Alliance of National Movements (AENM), the coalition of far-right parties formed last month in Budapest, has failed in its an attempt to get its hands on European Parliament cash, as the jumble of reactionary rightists did not manage to file the application on time.

The alliance, which includes the UK's BNP, France's Front National and Hungary's Jobbik, says it wants its share of the around €11 million that the parliament hands out every year to pan-European political parties, informally known as ‘europarties'. This would have amounted to around €400,000 for the group to carry out advertising, research and campaigning atop the money MEPs already receive.

"Conservatives, socialists, Greens and communists all receive European funds. It is normal that we demand the same on behalf of our electors who have expressed their hopes," Front National MEP Bruno Gollnisch told reporters in the European capital announcing the Brussels launch of the group.

While the cluster of far-righters managed to cobble together the group in Budapest on 24 October, as earlier reported by EUobserver, the cut-off for 2010 funding was 1 November and so if the chamber does ultimately recognise the formation, it will still not be able to access any money until 2011.

Conceding that the group had fumbled the deadline, Mr Gollnish said: "The money is not the main purpose. While we want to get our share back, the share that is due the people who voted for us and sympathise with our goals, the real aim here is the formation of a political alliance where we can support each other."

Europarties vs. European Parliament groups

Pan-continental europarties are structurally distinct entities from the political families of MEPs in the Strasbourg chamber, though at the same time remain linked ideologically.

A grouping in the European Parliament requires a certain number of MEPs from seven EU member states; for a europarty, the rules are more relaxed and national MPs and regional representatives may also count towards the seven-country minimum. There is also no minimum number of deputies.

In the AENM's case, the alliance has had to depend very much on a tiny rightist groupuscules without MEPs: Belgium's Front National, which has one seat in the country's Chamber of Representatives and one seat in the Senate, and Italy's neo-fascist Fiamma Tricolore and Sweden's National Democrats. The former has a single deputy in the Umbrian regional assembly, while the latter has councillors in just two municipalities south of Stockholm. But municipal representatives do not count towards the europarty threshold.

Excluding the Swedes, the group only has deputies from five EU member states.

The BNP's Nick Griffin, however, says that he hopes to soon have on board far-right parties from Spain and Portugal - which have no MEPs either - as well as from Ukraine, but this would not count towards the total, as the country is outside the EU. Nevertheless, he also said that Austria's Freedom Party, which does have substantial support - it won 12.8 percent in the June elections, giving it two MEPs - may soon join.

Whites only

Once the alliance is legally registered, the Bureau of the European Parliament - the chamber's governing body - must rule on whether it meets the europarty regulations, which also demand an observation of "the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law."

"This could present a problem if certain parties are found to continue to refuse membership to certain ethnicities," Federico de Girolamo, a parliament spokesperson, told EUobserver. The BNP was ordered by a London court in October to end its internal whites-only policy.

Mr de Girolamo said however there was still a chance the alliance could eventually access EU funds if they meet all the rules.

"So long as [membership issues] are resolved, then there has to be a really good reason for them to be denied [europarty status]," he continued. "Democracy means including all opinions. We cannot be seen denying them this just because we don't agree with them."

Hungarian vs Slovak nationalisms

A major block to forming a larger group is the inability of the different far-right parties in the European Parliament and beyond, who often adhere to mutually exclusive national mythologies, to get along.

Hungarian MEP Balczo Zoltan, Jobbik's vice-president, angrily told journalists at the press conference that the alliance will never permit the inclusion of Slovak or Romanian nationalists, as their brand of nationalism was exclusionary of the wrong type of people.

"Millions of ethic Hungarians live [outside] Hungary and the Jobbik Movement for a Better Hungary will never work together with parties that are not patriotic or nationalist, but instead chauvinist. We will never work with the Slovak National Party or the Greater Romania Party. This is a declaration!"

The SNP does not restrict itself to inflammatory rhetoric about Roma, Jews and gays and lesbians, but also Hungarians. Jan Slota, the party's leader, has in the past said: "We will sit in our tanks and destroy Budapest," and: "Hungarians are a cancer in the body of the Slovak nation."

Greater Romania Party leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor, for his part, regularly rails against the alleged anti-Romania conspiracies of ethnic Hungarians.

EUObserver

BNP set to join EU far-right group

Alliance will bring extremist parties major funding from Brussels

The British National party is close to finalising a pan-European alliance with other far-right political parties that would allow them to tap Brussels for hundreds of thousands more euros and greatly increase their power in the European parliament.

Anti-fascist groups have expressed grave concerns about the formation of the Alliance of European National Movements, warning that it threatens to undermine the democratic process.

So far, five far-right parties – Hungary's Jobbik, France's National Front, Italy's Three-Colour Flame, Sweden's National Democrats and Belgium's National Front – have signed up to the coalition, agreeing to abide by a declaration of common goals drafted by the BNP's leader, Nick Griffin. The BNP was due to join last month, but was forced to postpone the move following the furore surrounding Griffin's appearance on Question Time. However, the BNP will sign up within weeks, according to insiders.

Austria's Freedom party, as well as groups from Spain and Portugal, are also poised to join the coalition, which has pledged to oppose "supranational bodies like the European Union which seek to limit the rights of individual countries". If the alliance can muster 25 MEPs from at least seven EU member states, it will be able to garner considerably more influence within the European parliament than the various parties can achieve on their own.

Similar-size groupings in the past have been able to access at least an additional €1.5m in grants and payments from the EU to help cover the cost of extra secretarial and administrative services. They may also be able to appoint a chairman of an influential EU parliamentary committee.

So far, the alliance can boast fewer than 10 MEPs. But if it relaxes its opposition to a number of parties in Eastern Europe joining, or enjoys future success in Euro elections, its ranks would swell. Each of the parties will submit a representative to a presidency body that will co-ordinate decisions. The presidency will then elect a chief, leading to speculation over a role for Griffin.

Observer

Jobbik, BNP move to form pan-European far-right alliance

A clutch of far-right political parties have cobbled together an alliance of convenience to represent their interests in the European Parliament, the leader of Hungary's extreme nationalist grouping, Jobbik, announced in Budapest over the weekend.

Far-right monitoring groups however say that the coalition is made up for the most part of ultra-right wing groupuscules that have no representation in Strasbourg, meaning they will not be able to draw on any public funding for staff or research.

Gabor Vona, the Jobbik party chairman, announced in Budapest on Saturday (24 October) the founding of the "Alliance of European Nationalist Movements," in a declaration of common goals drafted by the British National Party's (BNP) leader, Nick Griffin. Five parties have initially signed the nine-point declaration: Jobbik, France's Front National, Italy's Fiamma Tricolore, Sweden's National Democrats and Belgium's Walloon extremists, the Front Nationalists.

Although the BNP was not in attendance at the launch, the BNP is "100 percent" behind the new grouping, Jobbik's vice-president and one of three MEPs in Strasbourg Zoltran Balczo, told EUobserver. Mr Griffin could not attend the founding meeting in Hungary due to the increased demands on the British group in the wake of the publicity it received from its invitation to a BBC political talk show.

The alliance is currently involved in negotiations with other far-right groups in Spain and Portugal. Austria's Freedom Party (FPO) has also expressed an intention to join, according to Gabor Vona, Jobbik's domestic leader. FPO euro-deputy Andreas Moelzer was also due to attend, but fell ill and could not go.

The declaration rejects "any attempts at forming an EU federal state," calls for pro-family policies and "traditional values" and demands Europe be protected from "religious, political, economic and financial imperialism."

Each of the parties are to submit one representative to a presidency body that will co-ordinate decisions. The presidency will then elect its own chief from the group.

Only Jobbik, the French Front National, the BNP and the FPO have any representation in the European Parliament, missing by some degree the minimum number of MEPs the chamber requires to form an official political grouping and access EU cash. To do so, a political family, as they are known in EU circles, needs to muster a minimum of 25 deputies from at least 7 member states.

While Jobbik won 14.7 percent of the vote in Hungary in the June European elections, giving it three seats in Strasbourg, and the BNP won two, most of the other parties did not even garner 1 percent.

Mr Balczo says that this is only a short-term obstacle. "These rules are just for a faction in the parliament. There are other possibilities: The first step is to found a European party that is recognised by the parliament. This will be done in either Brussels or Strasbourg. For a pan-European party, which is separate from a political grouping within the parliament, the rules are not as strict."

The Liberals in the parliament for example, are in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, while their pan-European political party, the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party, has members from EU and non-EU states.

"It's only the second step that is try to form a faction in the European Parliament, but at some point this too will be possible," Mr Balczo said.

Competing visions of national supremacy have in the past presented a difficult hurdle for forming a far-right group in the parliament. In the last legislature, the far-right grouping "Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty" lasted only a few months before it broke up over Italian members insulting their Romanian colleagues.

Notably, in the new grouping there is no representation from the Greater Romania Party, Ataka, from Bulgaria's rightist extremists or from the Slovak National Party.

"We will not participate in any alliance with any party that is chauvinist towards ethnic Hungarians," said Mr Balczo, "and the Romanians and the Slovaks are very, very strongly against ethnic Hungarians."

Even the friendly relations between Jobbik and the BNP run up against different national perspectives.

"There are some differences over agriculture for example," Mr Balczo said. "Voting [in the parliament] last Thursday on the budget, we and the Front National voted differently to the BNP, because we have a different position on protecting family farms."

The welcoming of the Walloon Front National also precludes bringing on board Belgium's much more popular Vlaams Belang, which while Belgian, is a Flemish nationalist party that opposes the idea that francophones and Flemings can live together in the same country.

"In all probability, this alliance will go the way of its predecessor and implode within months, and this time they can't even form a faction in the European Parliament. It's another Titanic of a group," Graham Atkinson, the European editor of British-based far-right monitoring magazine, Searchlight, told this website.

EUobserver

BNP fails to find support among European far-right parties

The British National Party’s first foray into Brussels ended in failure yesterday after it was unable find enough allies on the far-Right to form an official group in the European Parliament.

Nick Griffin, the party leader and one of its two newly elected MEPs, has agreed instead to work informally with a loose group of five ultra-nationalist parties, notably the Front National of the veteran French racist Jean-Marie le Pen.

Mr Griffin had pinned his hopes on persuading the nine MEPs of Italy’s Northern League to ally themselves with the smaller far-right parties, but was shunned by the party, led by Umberto Bossi and part of Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition.

The failure to meet the threshold of 25 MEPs from at least seven countries to form a parliamentary group means the loss of up to a million euros a year for the far-right parties which could have been spent on staff, offices and publications in Brussels, Strasbourg and their home countries.

“It appears at present we are below the threshold,” said Mr Griffin, after talks at the European Parliament in Brussels with its key allies from France. He spent two days there with fellow Andrew Brons, his fellow party MEP. “We have to see how the other political groups get on with their negotiations and if they cannot do a deal whether they will deal with us.”

Mr Griffin said that he had had a friendly response from other MEPs and added: “Virtually everyone is here to do the best by their constituents and on that basis we will work with anybody.”

The ultra-nationalist parties interested in working together informally included Jobbik — the Movement for a Better Hungary — Vlaams Belang from Belgium (the Flemish Interest) and Attack from Bulgaria, he said. But despite the increased number of MEPs elected this month from the far-right end of the political spectrum, the BNP grouping could attract only 12.

Besides the Northern League’s nine MEPs, the putative group was also shunned by the anti-Islamic Dutch Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, which won four seats. Although banned from Britain for his outspoken views, Mr Wilders has also expressed his dislike of the Front National and Flemish Interest as he attempts to appeal to mainstream voters in Holland.

Similarly, the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party, regarded as right-wing nationalist, will not sit with the BNP or Mr Le Pen, who repeated his denial of the Holocaust in the last parliamentary session. The DPP, which has two MEPs, regards itself as more centrist and has been a coalition partner in the Danish Government.

Nobody, however, seems prepared to touch the Greater Romania Party, whose MEPs were involved in the break-up of the far-right Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty group in the last Parliament. They broke up the group after only 11 months in a row with Alessandro Mussolini, the daughter of Il Duce, after she called all Romanians criminals.

The Northern League has been vetoed by David Cameron from joining the new anti-federalist group being formed by the Conservatives with Czech and Polish MEPs. The Italian party may now link with the UK Independence Party as it tries to find at least six allies to meet the threshold for a formal group.

Parties are expected to declare their groupings in time for the European Parliament’s inaugural sitting on July 14.

Times Online

Anti-immigrant and Europhobic – far right parties ride populist wave

Members of Jobbik, a far-right Hungarian party which has
been using Auschwitz slogans in its attempt to pick up votes.

In Europe's biggest port, where nearly half the population of 600,000 is of immigrant origin, Geert Wilders appears to be knocking on an open door.

The platinum-blond, Islam-baiting populist is soaring in opinion surveys in the Netherlands, hammering the anti-immigration message to double his ratings this year to the point where his Freedom party is challenging to be the strongest in the country, according to a leading weekly tracking poll.

Wilders' acolytes are also poised to enter the European parliament for the first time after elections for the EU's sole democratically elected institution, covering 375 million people across 27 countries, take place next week.

"He's a clown, crazy," said Aarjen Heida, a Rotterdam banker, of the ­iconoclast banned from Britain for "hate speech" and facing trial in the Netherlands. "But he's dangerous. A lot of people will vote for him. People are unhappy with the way things are going here and often that has to do with foreigners."

Hans Oole, a retired Rotterdam food engineer, insisted he would not vote for Wilders next week. "I don't like the way he says things. But sometimes he's right. Most Dutch people are really afraid of Islam and it is coming all over."

According to city statistics, ethnic Dutch residents will be a minority in Rotterdam within a few years. At present just over one third of children under 14 are ethnically Dutch. Wilders, who likens Islam to fascism and the Qur'an to Mein Kampf, exploits such figures to argue that the Netherlands is being swamped by immigration. He also hates the EU, pledging to try to abolish the European parliament when his party ­colleagues take their seats in July. He hopes to win five of the 25 Dutch seats.

Wilders' success represents, in part, a souring of traditional Dutch enthusiasm for the EU. It also appears symptomatic of a broader insurrectionary mood across Europe that is expected to favour extremists, mavericks and populists in the voting taking place over four days from next Thursday. Overt racism and the calculated use of Nazi language are featuring in what is otherwise a lacklustre campaign.

In Austria, the hard-right Freedom party of Heinz-Christian Strache, tipped to take up to 20% of the vote, is pandering openly to antisemitism. "A veto of Turkey and Israel joining the EU," declare the party posters despite the fact that Israel, unlike Turkey, is not negotiating to join.

Last week in the Czech Republic, state television broadcast a campaign slot from the small, fascist National party calling the large Roma community "parasites" and echoing Nazi formulation of the Holocaust policy from 1942 by demanding "a final solution of the Gypsy question".

The party is not expected to get into the European parliament, but in ­Hungary the far-right Jobbik, which boasts black-shirted paramilitaries and maintains relations with the British National party, has been using Auschwitz slogans and running a lurid anti-Gypsy campaign. It, like the BNP, could make an electoral breakthrough and win a seat in the parliament which is sited alternately and at great cost in Strasbourg and Brussels.

If the far right is making inroads, the hard left, too, may benefit from the disenchantment with mainstream parties, notably in two of the core EU countries, Germany and France.

The new anti-capitalist party of a postman Trotskyist, Olivier Besancenot, is predicted to win around 10% of the vote in France, while the New Left in Germany – former East German communists allied with West German social democratic defectors – could do likewise. Both parties' gains will hurt the mainstream social democrats.

The chances of the Europhobic extremists entering the parliament are strengthened by the wretched turnout expected next week.

"The low turnout means that those who do vote have very strong opinions. That will bring in more extremist politicians," said Sara Hagemann, a Danish analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels. "You'll see a lot of protest voters in Europe and a lot of apathy towards political elites."

The lack of interest in the election, or protesting by abstaining, could spell a crisis of legitimacy for the parliament and of credibility for the EU more broadly. It is virtually certain that voters will stay away in record numbers, making participation the lowest since voting for the parliament started 30 years ago.

A Eurobarometer poll predicts a turnout of 34%, more than 10 points down on 2004, but that may prove to be optimistic since the pollsters have consistently overestimated participation rates. A poll-tracking study being run by the London School of Economics and ­Trinity College Dublin predicts a turnout of around 30%, meaning that more than two out of three voters across the EU will boycott the ballot.

"The risk of abstention is that it allows Eurosceptics and extremists to take over our debate and our future," José Manuel Barroso, the European commission president, warned recently.

Mobilising voters is made more difficult by the fact that the election does not decide a government, nor are the 736 MEPs elected able to initiate European laws, reinforcing the popular notion that the parliament is a remote, irrelevant talking shop.

In fact, voter turnout is in inverse proportion to the parliament's growing powers. Turnout has fallen in each of the seven elections since 1979, while every treaty reshaping the way the EU is run has increased the parliament's clout. It now has a say in shaping around 75% of European law.

From next year, if the Lisbon treaty is implemented following a second referendum in Ireland in October, it will be empowered to "co-decide" almost all European laws, making the parliament one of the big winners of the Lisbon streamlining reforms.

In what already looks like a doomed attempt to combat indifference and drum up interest in the ballot, the parliament itself – as opposed to the competing parties – has hired a German PR firm and spent some €18m (£15.6m) of European taxpayers' money trying to sell the election.

"Come on! It's just a few minutes, maybe you can combine [voting] with a walk in the park or a drink in a cafe. Not much effort to tell Europe what you want," pleads the parliament propaganda. It is falling on closed ears. The lavish spending only compounds the ­parliament's problems, reinforcing the conviction that MEPs are either wasting taxpayers' money or pocketing it.

With around 9,000 candidates running for the 736 seats and with each national ballot turning on the idiosyncrasies of 27 vastly different countries, variations in voting behaviour will be marked. In Germany, for example, the poll will be analysed closely for what it portends for the general election in September, Europe's most important political contest this year. In France, it is likely to be seen as a referendum on two years of President Nicolas Sarkozy, while in Italy, the election will be scrutinised to see if Silvio Berlusconi's marital breakdown is damaging his popularity.

Despite the national variations, trans-national trends are discernible as voters look like venting their anger on incumbents because of the economic crisis, and growing unemployment.

The French, Italian, and Polish governments may be the big exceptions to this trend. But Euroscepticism, previously a British and, to a lesser extent, a Scandinavian characteristic, is spreading even into the historical heartland of the EU, such as the Netherlands.

"The Dutch have become very cantankerous. It's very sad," said a senior EU official. "They've gone from being the most pro-European country to one of the most anti-European."

While Wilders pledges to destroy the EU "from within", the hard-left Socialist party's pitch is for "more Netherlands, less Brussels". And among the centrist parties in government in the Netherlands, there is little positive being said about Brussels or the EU. "Even among the non-extreme parties, scepticism has crept in," said Hagemann.

Leading this new movement of Eurosceptics and seeking to establish it as a more powerful transnational political force in Europe are David Cameron's Conservatives, who are pledged to end two decades of alliance with the mainstream European centre-right (the European People's party) and form a new caucus of European Conservatives.

The entry of several dozen extremists and populists will make the parliament a more raucous, bad-tempered place, but will not substantively affect the balance of power between Christian Democrats, social democrats and liberals.

But Cameron's move should have more impact. He has been helped by the entry of central European countries in 2004. He will depend on rightwingers from Poland and the Czech Republic and a few other countries to set up the new grouping, which will signify the biggest change in the new five-year parliament.

The LSE-Trinity College study predicts more than 60 seats from up to nine countries for the new Conservative caucus, making it the fourth biggest in the parliament. It will be loud in its condemnation of the Lisbon treaty and will campaign for the "repatriation" of powers from Brussels to national capitals.

"We will be very united in limiting European power," said Konrad Szymanski, a Polish MEP from the rightwing Law and Justice party which will supply the second biggest bloc of MEPs after the British.

The election will usher in a busy few months at the top of European politics – Barroso's expected renomination as head of a new commission a fortnight later at a European summit; a German election; an Irish referendum; and probably a contest for the two plum posts of first European president and foreign minister.

But the low turnout and predicted gains for anti-Europeans will get this burst of high-powered politicking off to a bad start.

Guardian

Banned Dutch politician lands in Britain

A right-wing Dutch politician banned from entering the UK over his anti-Islam views landed in Britain today.

Geert Wilders was invited to Westminster to show his 17-minute film Fitna, which criticises the Koran as a "fascist book", by a member of the House of Lords. But on Tuesday he received a letter from the Home Office refusing him entry because his opinions "would threaten community security and therefore public security" in the UK.

Mr Wilders, a member of Holland's Freedom Party, condemned the British Government as "weak and cowardly" and vowed he would make the trip anyway. He left Amsterdam on a BMI flight at lunchtime, a party spokesman said.

The aircraft touched down at London's Heathrow Airport at about 2pm.

BMI refused to confirm that Mr Wilders had booked a flight with the airline, citing data protection laws. A spokesman said only: "We are obliged to observe Government-enforced travel restrictions. If they are imposed, we are duty-bound to abide by them."

It is understood that the controversial politician's passport will be flagged up at Heathrow immigration and he will be refused entry to Britain at that point.

Mr Wilders has urged the Dutch government to ban the Koran and warned of a "tsunami" of Islam swamping the Netherlands. His film sparked violent protests around the Muslim world last year for linking verses in the religious text with footage of terrorist attacks. He has launched an appeal against an Amsterdam court's order that he should be prosecuted for hate speech.

Mr Wilders said he had already shown his film to Denmark's parliament and would take it to Italy and the US House of Representatives in the coming weeks. He told the BBC: "I was very surprised and very saddened that the freedom of speech that I believe was a very strong point in UK society is being harassed today."

Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said the government of the Netherlands would press for a reversal of the travel ban.

UK Independence Party peer Lord Pearson, who invited Mr Wilders to Britain, said the screening of the film would go ahead today "with or without Mr Wilders". In a joint statement he and cross-bench peer Baroness Cox said they were "promoting freedom of speech" and accused the Government of "appeasing" militant Islam.

They added: "Geert Wilders' Fitna film, available on the web, is not a threat to anyone. It merely suggests how the Koran has been used by militant Islamists to promote and justify their violence. They react in fury and menace to our intention to show the film and have boasted that their threats of aggressive demonstrations prevented its previous showing in the Mother of Parliaments.

"This was not the case - the event was postponed to clarify issues of freedom of speech. The threat of intimidation in fact increases the justification for the film to be shown and discussed in Parliament and by the British and international press."

The Home Office said: "The Government opposes extremism in all its forms. It will stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country, and that was the driving force behind tighter rules on exclusions for unacceptable behaviour that the Home Secretary announced in October last year."

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: "Freedom of speech is our most precious freedom of all, because all the other freedoms depend on it. But there is a line to be drawn even with freedom of speech, and that is where it is likely to incite violence or hatred against someone or some group. Where there is risk of harm to others, there has to be some limit.

"Having watched Geert Wilders' movie Fitna, with its raw and emotional appeals to anti-Islamic feeling and its shocking images of violence, there is no doubt in my mind that he has overstepped the line that should be defended in a civilised society and that the Home Secretary's ruling is right."

A spokesman for the Conservative Party said it did not wish to comment.

The National Secular Society's president said he wrote to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith arguing that she had made a mistake in denying an application by a "democratically-elected politician from a sovereign state who wants to come and express an opinion".

Terry Sanderson said: "It may be a controversial opinion but he is entitled to express it. We think that the wrong people are being targeted here because the reason they have given for refusing him entry is that it may result in some kind of public disturbance. We think that is not a good enough reason. It's very disturbing that they are prepared to do this just on the basis that somebody might object."

Mr Sanderson said that, while the organisation did not agree with a lot of what Mr Wilders said, the right way to deal with it was to "argue with him, debate and discuss - not silence him".

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said: "Geert Wilders has been an open and relentless preacher of hate - there is little difference between his views and those of the far right. We have no problem with the challenge of criticisms to our faith, but the film that will be screened by Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox is nothing less than a cheap and tacky attempt to whip up hysteria against Muslims.

"Mr Wilders' xenophobic views have been identified as repugnant by a Dutch court, and is now confirmed by his official exclusion from the United Kingdom. It is now time to ask why Peers of the Realm who promote such demagogues without any censure are allowed to be regarded as mainstream, responsible leaders in our community."

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, supported the Government's stance. He said: "His hatred of Islam is based on fiction and his presence in the UK may lead to community tensions. We in the UK value freedom and also our communities have worked so hard to build understanding and respect for each other. Mr Wilders and his fascist views are not welcomed to our country where we pride ourselves as a multi-faith society. This is not about freedom of speech but about stopping the incitement to religious hatred this man promotes."

After leaving the aircraft, Mr Wilders was taken into a side room to be interviewed, witnesses said.

The Dutch ambassador to Britain, Pim Waldeck, was at Heathrow to offer assistance.

Among those waiting for Mr Wilders in arrivals at the airport was Gerard Batten, UK Independence Party MEP for London. He said: "I thought it would be a nice touch to turn up and welcome him here if he gets through."

Independent

Banned from Britain, Dutch campaigner against Islam

A far-right Dutch MP whose film linking Islamic texts with the terror attacks on New York sparked protests around the Muslim world was last night banned from entering Britain.

Geert Wilders, who leads the small Dutch Freedom Party, was due to show his controversial 17-minute film at an event in the House of Lords tomorrow, but was informed yesterday by British officials that he would not be allowed to enter the country. The decision sparked an immediate diplomatic row after the Dutch Government pressed Britain to reverse the ban.

The film Fitna, which criticises the Koran as a "fascist book", sparked violent protests around the Muslim world last year. The film, which has been posted on the internet, juxtaposes images of the Koran with footage of the 9/11 twin tower attacks and other terrorist atrocities. Mr Wilders had been invited to show the film at an event in Westminster hosted by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the former Conservative, who is now a UK Independence Party member of the House of Lords.

The film starts with an image of the hugely controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohamed with a bomb as a turban that sparked global protests after it was printed in a Danish newspaper. The film then shows images of the 9/11 aircraft flying into the World Trade Centre, with quotes from calls to the emergency services from people inside the buildings.

It also contains images of bloodstained corpses following the 2004 Madrid rail bombings before showing gruesome images of beheadings and attacks. The film then shows statistics indicating a growing Muslim population in the Netherlands .

Last night, the Home Office refused to comment on Mr Wilders' case. But a spokesman said: "The Government opposes extremism in all forms. It will stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country. That was the driving force behind tighter rules on exclusions for unacceptable behaviour that the Home Secretary announced in October last year."

Mr Wilders, who lives with round-the-clock security after receiving death threats, said a letter from the British embassy informed him he was being refused entry because his views "threaten community harmony and therefore public security" in the UK. He condemned the British Government's decision as "cowardly".

"This is something you'd expect from Saudia Arabia, not Great Britain," Mr Wilders told a parliamentary session. But he signalled that he might make the journey to London on Thursday despite the ban.

"I am seriously considering just trying it out and just getting on the plane," he said. "Then I'll see what happens. Let them handcuff me," he was quoted as telling Dutch newspaper NRC.

The Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen said his government would continue to press Britain to reverse the ban. He said he "deeply regretted" that a Dutch lawmaker had been barred entry to the UK. Mr Verhagen said he had first contacted the British ambassador in The Hague. Having failed, Mr Verhagen then telephoned his British counterpart David Miliband. "It is highly regrettable that a Dutch parliamentarian is refused entry to another EU country," he said in a statement.

Mr Wilders, whose Freedom Party holds nine of the 120 seats in the Dutch Parliament, said he was shocked by the travel ban. He said: "We are talking here about a European Union country, one of the oldest democracies in the Western world."

Lord Pearson, who invited Wilders to show Fitna at the House of Lords, said he was "very surprised" at the news and was looking into what had happened to the Dutch MP.

Independent

Islam film Dutch MP to be charged

A Dutch court has ordered prosecutors to put a right-wing politician on trial for making anti-Islamic statements. Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders made a controversial film last year equating Islam with violence and has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

"In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in the general interest to... draw a clear line," the court in Amsterdam said.

Mr Wilders said the judgement was an "attack on the freedom of expression".

"Participation in the public debate has become a dangerous activity. If you give your opinion, you risk being prosecuted," he said. Not only he, but all Dutch citizens opposed to the "Islamisation" of their country would be on trial, Mr Wilders warned. "Who will stand up for our culture if I am silenced?" he added.

The three judges said that they had weighed Mr Wilders's "one-sided generalisations" against his right to free speech, and ruled that he had gone beyond the normal leeway granted to politicians.

"The Amsterdam appeals court has ordered the prosecution of member of parliament Geert Wilders for inciting hatred and discrimination, based on comments by him in various media on Muslims and their beliefs," the court said in a statement. "The court also considers appropriate criminal prosecution for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism made by Wilders," it added.

The court's ruling reverses a decision last year by the public prosecutor's office, which said Mr Wilders's comments had been made outside parliament as a contribution to the debate on Islam in Dutch society and that no criminal offence had been committed. Prosecutors said on Wednesday that they could not appeal against the judgement and would open an investigation immediately.

Gerard Spong, a prominent lawyer who pushed for Mr Wilders's prosecution, welcomed the court's decision. "This is a happy day for all followers of Islam who do not want to be tossed on the garbage dump of Nazism," he told reporters.

In March 2008, Mr Wilders posted a film about the Koran on the internet, prompting angry protests across the Muslim World. The opening scenes of Fitna - a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife" - show a copy of the holy book followed by footage of the bomb attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, London in July 2005 and Madrid in March 2004.

Pictures appearing to show Muslim demonstrators holding up placards saying "God bless Hitler" and "Freedom go to hell" also feature. The film ends with the statement: "Stop Islamisation. Defend our freedom."

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said at the time that the film wrongly equated Islam with violence and served "no purpose other than to offend". A year earlier, Mr Wilders described the Koran as a "fascist book" and called for it to be banned in "the same way we ban Mein Kampf", in a letter published in the De Volkskrant newspaper.

Mr Wilders has had police protection since Dutch director Theo Van Gogh was killed by a radical Islamist in 2004.

Correspondents say his Freedom Party (PVV), which has nine MPs in the lower house of parliament, has built its popularity largely by tapping into the fear and resentment of Muslim immigrants.

BBC

Austrian far right leader dies in car accident

Former leader of Austria's Freedom Party, the late Jörg Haider

Austria's veteran far-right leader Jörg Haider was killed in a car accident this morning near his home town of Klagenfurt, police said.

Haider, who led the far-right into a coalition government from 2000-2006, made headlines across the world and drew international condemnation with his blunt anti-immigrant statements and for seeming to flirt with Nazi sympathies.

The 58-year-old governor of Austria's Carinthia province died after suffering major head and chest injuries when the government car he was driving went out of control and rolled down an embankment, police said. He was alone in the car. Police said they were investigating the cause of the crash.

"This is for us like the end of the world," said Haider's spokesman Stefan Petzner. He said Haider had been heading to a town near Klagenfurt in the mountainous southern province for a gathering of his family to mark his mother's 90th birthday.

Haider, a folksy character who struck a popular chord among many Austrians, headed one of two far-right parties that surged to a combined 30 percent of the vote in a parliamentary election last month, potentially redrawing Austria's political landscape. Active in politics since his teenage years in the affluent Alpine country, he became a full-time politician in 1977 for the far-right Freedom Party.

Haider caused an international backlash when he led the Freedom Party into a coalition government with the conservative People's Party in 2000, triggering widespread condemnation and temporary European Union sanctions against Austria. The deal fell apart, leading to an early election in 2002 in which the Freedom Party lost heavily, followed by a remake of the coalition.

After internecine struggles within the Freedom Party, Haider formed the breakaway Alliance for the Future of Austria in 2005. His new party became junior partner in the coalition government, while the Freedom Party left and went into opposition. But in a national election in 2006, the Alliance for the Future of Austria only just scraped past the 4 percent threshold to enter parliament.

Haider also made headlines with several verbal gaffes and by making foreign trips to see leaders such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. He once reproached Austria's government by citing the "proper labour policies" of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. On another occasion he referred to Nazi concentration camps in a parliamentary debate as "penal camps".

Born in Upper Austria, his father was a former member of Hitler's brown-shirted storm troopers. His mother was a teacher who had been a Hitler Youth leader.

Haider is survived by his wife and two daughters.

Independent

Austria in crisis as far right win 29% of vote

• Strache seen as further to right than mentor Haider
• Weakened main party faces coalition dilemma

He has been filmed in forests, carrying arms and wearing paramilitary fatigues in the company of banned German neo-Nazis. Islam, he says, is "the fascism of the 21st century". He was photographed apparently giving a three-fingered neo-Nazi salute - though he says he was ordering three beers.

He mocks gay people; wants a ministry for the deportation of immigrants; says "Vienna must not become Istanbul"; hopes to repeal laws banning Nazi revivalism, and is pushing for a constitutional ban on the building of minarets. Heinz-Christian Strache, a former dental technician, is the new star of Austrian politics and the new poster boy of Europe's extreme right.

"I was never a neo-Nazi, and never will be," Strache has insisted. But when he sued the Vienna news weekly Profil for defamation, the court ruled that Strache could fairly be said to display "an affinity to national-socialist thinking".

Strache, 39, led his Freedom party to 18% of the vote in an early general election on Sunday. His former boss and mentor-turned-rival, Jörg Haider, single-handedly steered his breakaway far-right Movement for Austria's Future to 11% - meaning that almost one in three Austrians who voted opted for the extreme right.

"A unique case among the western democracies," said Profil yesterday as Viennese liberals reeled from the results of an election that put the far right comfortably ahead of the mainstream conservatives of the Austrian People's party and neck-and-neck with the Social Democrats, who narrowly won the election.

It will be very difficult for any party to muster a parliamentary majority. The only options are for the Social Democrats to invite Strache into government, or to form another "grand coalition" with the Christian Democrats. Such a coalition collapsed in June after 18 months in office, and another attempt could fire a bigger protest vote for Strache next time.

The Freedom party last stunned Europe in 1999, when Haider led it to second place with 27% of the vote, and a place in government. On Sunday, under Strache, the combined far right did even better, while the big parties did much worse.

Strache has been heavily involved in extreme-right politics since his youth, when he was engaged to the daughter of one of the founders of the Austrian branch of Germany's neo-Nazi National Democratic party. He became a city councillor in Vienna in the early 1990s, imitating the populist techniques of Haider: snappy dressing, outrageous soundbites and populist tub-thumping; he was quick-witted and entertaining.

By 2005 the Austrian far right was at a low ebb. The leader quit, formed a breakaway party, and in effect retired to run the province of Carinthia - before staging a comeback on Sunday. But it was Strache who took over the Freedom party and led it to an improbable success, taking 15% of the vote in Vienna's 2005 local elections . In the following year's general election, he mustered 11%, and then 18% on Sunday.

He is widely seen as more aggressive and more rightwing than Haider, and likes to bash Brussels (an easy option in a country that registers just 28% support for the EU), inveigh against Islam, and take a loud and proud anti-immigration stand.

Strache calls himself a true patriot, declaring his ambition to be chancellor or interior minister. He hopes to fashion a coalition with Flemish separatists, France's National Front, Bulgarian extreme nationalists and anyone else who will join in a "European Patriotic party".

"Thirty percent for people who portray national socialism as innocuous," wrote the commentator Hans Rauscher yesterday, "Who crawl around in forests with neo-Nazi mates, who are surrounded by skinheads; who campaign against foreigners; make common cause with the European extreme right; toy with antisemitism; campaign against Muslims, and develop contacts with the Serbian Radical party whose leader, Vojislav Seselj, is in the dock at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Austria is tops in Europe again."

Guardian

Haider is back. Just don't mention the war

Last time he was in power, his nation became a pariah state. These days, Jörg Haider is more likely to praise the EU than the Nazis, although he and his party still hold controversial views about immigrants.

Jörg Haider believes he will hold the balance of
power after parliamentary elections this weekend

Jörg Haider, the far-right politician who turned Austria into an international pariah less than a decade ago because of his sympathetic views about Nazi Germany, is aiming for a surprise comeback in elections this weekend.

When he was part of the Austrian government in 1999 the rabble-rousing populist described Nazi SS veterans as "men of honour" and praised Hitler's employment policies, triggering European Union sanctions against Austria as a result.

Mr Haider, 58, has been mostly out of national politics ever since, but in Sunday's parliamentary elections he is hoping to return with a result that will leave him holding the balance of power, and maybe even offer him the chance of becoming head of state.

In an interview at the headquarters of his Alliance for the Future of Austria party in Vienna, Mr Haider told The Independent: "I want to run for the post of Chancellor of Austria – I am convinced that I can offer an alternative to those voters who have had enough of the failures of the outgoing grand coalition government."

Austria's grand coalition, comprising the conservative People's Party and the centre-left Social Democrats, collapsed in July after months of infighting. Neither of the two parties wants to form another alliance. Opinion polls published this week suggest that each will secure only around 25 per cent of the vote. The forecasts suggest that a further 25 per cent of votes will go to Austria's populist far-right bloc comprising the Freedom Party and Mr Haider's Alliance.

Mr Haider is banking on such a constellation leaving the far-right bloc as potential kingmakers. He says he is open to the idea of forming a coalition with either of the two main parties. And as a well-known figure in Austrian politics and a seasoned governor of the state of Carinthia, he sees himself as the ideal candidate for chancellor.

The veteran right-winger's praise for Hitler's employment policies and his attendance at a rally of SS veterans provoked widespread international criticism and charges that Austria had failed to learn the lessons of its Nazi past. Mr Haider says those days are now over but he added: "We are not going to let the outside world dictate to Austria how it should deal with the past."

Vienna is plastered with election billboards displaying colour photographs of a permanently tanned Mr Haider. He is shown wearing checked shirts and peasant costumes in an apparent appeal to Austrian country folk. "Let's roll up our sleeves and get on with the job – vote Jörg Haider – the original," proclaim the slogans. For his interview in the top-floor office of his Vienna HQ however, Mr Haider showed up in a figure-hugging white leather jacket and skin-tight trousers. He insisted that during his absence from Austria's national political scene he had become more reasonable and responsible. "Austria had reached a dead end with the grand coalition. We have lost out against chief industrial competitors in Germany and missed a chance," he explained. "I want to put Austria back in front," he added, listing a series of proposals for government funding for ailing medium-sized businesses. Mr Haider's confrontation with the EU also seemed to be over. Unlike his right-wing Freedom Party competitors who are advocating that Austria leave the EU, he wants his country to remain, although as a critical member.

His new-found enthusiasm may have something to do with the fact that Austria has benefited hugely from EU membership. In recent years the country has managed to expand its trade with eastern Europe. Unemployment is around 3 per cent and Austria now imports thousands of young German "guest workers" each year.

However despite the "responsible" rhetoric, it was clear that the governor of Carinthia continues to hold extreme views about immigrants. In the run-up to the election Mr Haider's Alliance had been conducting a controversial campaign in the southern city of Graz. It featured a large poster of an immigrant beggar woman clad in what appeared to be filthy clothes, sitting on a step in the centre of Graz. The slogan reminded voters that Mr Haider's party would "Clean up Graz". And alongside were posters, displaying the party's leading politicians sweeping the streets with brooms.

Mr Haider exploded at the suggestion that his poster was reminiscent of the anti-immigrant campaigning of the right-wing populist in next-door Switzerland, Christoph Blocher. "I know the British press, it is always on the look out for such negative extremism," he said. "Sarkozy, the President of France, used similar language after the riots in Paris. You cannot criticise us for using the same methods as the current president of the EU," he insisted, claiming that his campaign was designed at rooting out a "beggars' mafia" that had invaded part of Austria. Indeed, Mr Haider and his party see Austria threatened by a massive influx of criminals from eastern Europe.

Ironically, the biggest threat to his political re-emergence after this weekend is the leader of Austria's other right-wing organisation – the Freedom Party which Mr Haider left in 2005 following a split in the organisation, taking all of the Freedom Party's MPs with him.

Mr Haider's Alliance for the Future of Austria is the junior partner in the bloc. Polls suggest that most far-right votes, amounting to around 17 per cent, will go to the Freedom Party headed by Mr Haider's old protégé turned enemy, Heinz-Christian Strache. A 39-year-old former dental technician, Mr Strache has been running a virulently anti-foreigner campaign with slogans such as "Flights home for asylum cheats". He recently failed to win a court action against a magazine which accused him of having neo-Nazi contacts.

Mr Haider and Mr Strache have made it plain in the past that they consider themselves arch rivals and are said to dislike each other intensely. But Mr Haider has since indicated that he may have to work together with his enemy if he wants a taste of political power. "I will have to co-operate. He may not be my ideal candidate, but we will have to make compromises," he said.

Rise of the right The power of xenophobia

Galvanised by the issues of Third World immigration and Islam, right-wing parties are a force to be reckoned with across much of Europe today. Several of them have succeeded in rebranding themselves as traditional conservatives rather than quasi-Fascist.

In Norway the anti-immigrant Progress Party is now the largest in the land. Like other right-wing parties in Scandinavia, it has enjoyed surging support since the Islamic cartoon affair two years ago. In Switzerland, Christoph Blocher's Swiss People's Party won the general election last year after a campaign condemned as racist by UN monitors. In Poland the League of Polish Families, a member of the coalition government until a year ago, campaigns for the elimination of Jewish influence in business and the professions. The Vlaams Belang in Belgium is strongly anti-immigrant. Even in ultra-liberal Denmark, the nationalist and anti-immigrant Danish People's Party is now the third largest party. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi's Party of Freedom is sandwiched in the ruling coalition by the anti-immigrant Northern League and the post-Fascist National Alliance.

Independent

European nationalists to form new right-wing party

Ultra-conservative factions inside Europe are reuniting to form a new right-wing party. The new party, known currently as the “European Freedom Party” or the “European Patriotic Party,” is coming together under an anti-immigration, anti-Islamization banner.

The leaders of ultra-conservative parties in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria and France announced in Vienna on Friday that they are in talks with several countries and hope to obtain as broad support as possible. EU law requires a European political party to have a minimum of members from seven states.

“Our goal is clear, we want more than 10 parties as members and ideally one party from each EU country,” Austria’s Freedom Party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, told journalists.

“We say: Patriots of all the countries of Europe, unite! Because only together will we solve our problems,” he said, adding that “irresponsible mass immigration” was one of Europe’s main problems.

Supporters hope to launch the new party by November 15.

That date comes almost exactly one year after the demise of the Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty (its) European parliamentary group Nov. 14, 2007. The bloc collapsed a week after Italian mep Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, told a newspaper, “breaking the law has become a way of life for Romanians” (BBC News, Nov. 14, 2007). Romanians, who contributed five members to its, promptly withdrew from the party, putting it under the 20-member limit for a European parliamentary group.

its consisted of some of the same political forces that will make up the new EU party, including the French National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party, Belgian Flemish Interest, the Bulgarian Attack Coalition, Greater Romania, Italian meps and a British mep.

National Front leader and past French presidential hopeful Jean-Marie Le Pen, a former member of its and supporter of the new far-right party, is staunchly anti-immigration, and has been convicted in the past of anti-Semitism. The party’s chairman, Bruno Gollnisch, has denied certain facts about the Holocaust. The head of the Greater Romania party has been accused of xenophobia and anti-Semitism, and the predecessor to the Flemish Interest party, the Flemish Block, shut down when it was declared a racist organization by Belgium’s highest court. Austria’s Freedom Party is the former home of the infamous Jörg Haider, and the Attack Coalition seeks a “mono-ethnic” Bulgaria and has been accused of racism (ibid., Jan. 12, 2007).

Although its is defunct and the new party is small and looked upon with disdain by Europe’s mainstream, ultra-conservatives with extreme views like these will always find a home in the halls of European power.

When crisis strikes Europe and its leading nation, Germany—particularly if it is directly or indirectly related to non-indigenous threats like Islamist extremism—watch for Europe to unite quickly and for far-right sentiment to become more mainstream.

The Trumpet

Trepidation over Wilders' anti-Islam film

Tensions are growing over the expected release of a film by Geert Wilders, leader of the right-wing populist Freedom Party. At the end of last year Mr Wilders announced he was working on a film about the Koran as "a source of inspiration for intolerance, murder and terror". Dutch ministers have apparently been holding secret meetings about the film for some time. They are concerned about its possible repercussions in the Netherlands and abroad.

During a visit to the European Parliament in Strasburg this week, Syria's Grand Mufti Ahmad Badr al-Din Hassoun said that if the Freedom Party leader tears up or burns a Koran in his film,

"this will simply mean he is inciting wars and bloodshed. And he will be responsible. It is the responsibility of the Dutch people to stop Wilders."

The Muslim cleric's tone is reminiscent of the crisis that followed the publishing of the Danish cartoons of Mohammed two years ago. His words are all the more ominous considering that the most violent protests took place in Syria.

Secret meetings

The Dutch authorities are concerned about the possible repercussions of the anti-Koran film which Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders plans to release at the end of January.

On Wednesday it was announced that Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst and Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin have been holding secret meetings about the expected consequences for some time. The National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Tjibbe Joustra, is also involved in the discussions.

Mr Wilders announced his plans last November. He said he was making a film to show that the Koran is a fascist book which incites believers to violence and hatred.

Mr Wilders' remarks about Islam have become increasingly radical since the beginning of 2007. In February last year he said that if Muslims want to stay in the Netherlands they should tear out half the Koran and throw it away. In parliament he then called for the Koran to be banned, a proposal that was promptly rejected.

Mr Wilders now appears to be continuing his campaign against the Koran with this film. However, its exact content and where it will be shown remains shrouded in mystery. The big question is whether he will publicly desecrate the Koran, perhaps by tearing it up or burning it.

Tensions

Shortly after Mr Wilders had announced the making of his film, the interior and justice ministers held an interview with him, warning him of its possible repercussions and the associated risks to him personally. It appears that in November the interior minister also sent a letter to all mayors in the Netherlands, asking them to be 'extra alert' to the tensions that might arise, even before the film is released. "The announcement of the film," she wrote, "could lead to unrest in society and tension between population groups."

Police forces in major cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam say they are preparing for possible disturbances after the premiere of the notorious film, and seeking the cooperation of imams and other leading figures in the Muslim communities.

Danish cartoons

The Dutch authorities are also concerned about the reaction abroad, bearing in mind the spectre of the Danish cartoon crisis two years ago, when in many Muslim countries demonstrations were held, some of which turned violent. Dutch embassies in Islamic countries have received instructions on how to respond to possible violent protests against the film, and Dutch citizens abroad have been asked to register with their embassies in case evacuation becomes necessary.

Earlier this week Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen was in Madrid to attend the Alliance of Civilisations, an international forum aimed at reducing tensions between the Islamic world and the West. He was repeatedly questioned about the film. Addressing the forum he spoke about freedom of religion and expression.

"It is difficult to anticipate the content of the film, but freedom of expression doesn't mean the right to offend."

If the film is unacceptable, said Mr Verhagen, the Dutch government will express its disagreement in no uncertain terms. After the Danish cartoon crisis, various experts said they believed the wave of protest around the world might have been prevented if the Danish government had immediately distanced itself from the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.

RNW

German TV star pays for hailing Nazi 'values'

She was Germany’s favourite newsreader - a blonde, blue-eyed television star who became a campaigner for old-fashioned feminity.

Now Eva Herman has fallen from her pedestal - she has been sacked for praising Hitler’s policies towards women, families and motherhood. The Nazi years, she said, while presenting her latest book, The Noah’s Ark Principle, were a cruel time. They had, though, a redeeming quality: they celebrated family values. “There were the good things too, that is to say the values, the children, the mothers, the families, the solidarity . . .”

Within hours Herman, 48, was dismissed from state television. She has lost her talk show with immediate effect and her position as the presenter of the cult quiz programme called Did You See . .?

Part of Herman’s appeal to viewers was her campaign for a return to old-fashioned feminity. In an earlier book she pleaded for motherhood to be respected by society. Feminists accused her of trying to recreate the traditional German values of Children, Kitchen and Church.

The far Right seemed to agree. An organisation run by the Austrian nationalist Freedom Party invited her as a speaker - she cancelled at the last minute - and she is celebrated by far-right blogs.

This time she seems to have gone too far in blurring the boundaries between traditional German virtues and Nazi policies. “This is the worst I have heard in a long time,” the German Jewish novelist Ralph Giordano said. “Frau Herman should realise that the distinguishing feature of the Third Reich was not the way it treated mothers who were supposed to produce cannon fodder. The distinguishing feature was the use of the gas chambers.”

Herman said: “You have to see my remarks in context. This is not about Hitler’s values but about basic human values which were abused in the Third Reich.”

Under the Nazis, mothers who bore four healthy children were awarded a medal, the Mother Cross. Pregnant Aryan mothers were given generous maternity leave in the 1930s but primarily to free up work for the male unemployed. Children were encouraged in order to create the army of the future and to populate the captured territories in Eastern Europe.

“Whoever knows me and reads the book will be aware how deeply I reject left and right-wing extremism,” Herman said.

Her central thesis is that women have been forced to deny their true nurturing nature by the social pressure to succeed in the workplace. This in turn has robbed men of their sense of manhood and is contributing to Germany’s very low birthrate.

Times Online

Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker trying to ban burqas

A Dutch rightwing anti-Islam politician on Thursday submitted new proposals for a law banning burqas after an earlier attempt failed.

In a letter to parliament, Geert Wilders, who heads the Freedom Party which has nine of the 150 seats in the lower house, wrote that “the burqa and the niqab are a symbol of the oppression of women” and are “in defiance of the democratic constitutional state”. It is not known how many women in the Netherlands wear the face veils but estimates are a few dozen.

Nearly two years ago, in October 2005, a majority of the Dutch parliament voted in favour of a motion by Wilders to ban burqas in public places. However, the then minister of integration, hardliner Rita Verdonk, did not craft the law for a burqa ban after an advisory committee said such a ban could be unconstitutional because it violated the right to equal treatment for all residents of the country.

Now Wilders, known for his harsh anti-Islam rhetoric, has submitted his own law proposal and hopes parliament will agree. It is unlikely that he will get another majority as the November 2006 elections put an end to a centre-right majority in parliament that backed the plans.

Wilders wants to specifically ban burqas and niqabs in public places including stations, stadiums, shops, restaurants, museums, hospitals, cars driving on the public roads and public transports. He proposes a maximum sentence of 12 days in jail or a fine of $4,619.

If the law were passed, it would be a world first. No national government has yet banned the use of face veils in public places although some Belgian municipalities, including Antwerp, have introduced local bans. In his proposal, Wilders also cites Turkey and France. Turkey bans the wearing of veils and headscarves in public buildings while France has banned the use of obvious religious symbols like Islamic headscarves and veils in government buildings including schools and hospitals.

ICARE