Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban had, during his country’s term holding the rotating presidency of the European Union, in the second half of 2024, proclaimed the slogan MEGA, « Make Europe Great Again, » as a challenge to the Europe he abhors. The thunderous return to the White House of Donald Trump, father of the slogan MAGA, « Make America Great Again, » and guiding light for the European far right, has meant that the summit held by the Patriots for Europe group, the third largest group in the European Parliament, on Saturday, February 8, in Madrid, had to adopt MEGA as its own rallying cry.
Was this the establishment of the « reactionary international » denounced by President Emmanuel Macron? Is a European offshoot of Trumpism emerging? The triumphalist atmosphere of the public gathering, hosted by the Spanish far-right party Vox, was undoubtedly due to the powerful gust of reactionary impetus blowing in from across the Atlantic. The libertarian crusade waged by Argentine President Javier Milei, who sent a video message expressing his support for his European brothers-in-arms, as well as Hurricane Trump, both gave the European national-populist leaders present the feeling that the time for « reconquista » – a term used by several speakers – had come to Europe.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, preferred the term « renaissance » to « reconquest, » no doubt for French political reasons – her rival Eric Zemmour named his party « Reconquête. » She saw the « challenge of power » represented by Trump’s victory as « an exhortation to exist in the world to come, in the history that is being written. »
Discordant notes
Like other speakers, however, Le Pen did not manage to escape the contradictions that were present in many of the far-right leaders’ speeches. There were, of course, some points that united them, from Orban to Matteo Salvini, leader of the Italian Lega party, from Dutch PM Geert Wilders to his Czech counterpart, Andrej Babis: The rejection of immigration and anti-Islamic rhetoric, opposition to environmental standards and the European Green Deal, the fight against « woke-ism » and multiculturalism.
Yet there were also discordant notes, as well as points that some preferred to stay silent on. Orban attacked Europe’s spending to support Ukraine in « a hopeless war, » a subject the others carefully avoided. Santiago Abascal, the head of Vox, expressed his support for Alice Weidel, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s candidate for chancellor, but he was not followed in this by his European friends, who have considered the AfD in the European Parliament to be toxic. No mention was made of President Trump’s intention to impose tariffs on Europe, nor his proposal to expel two million Palestinians from Gaza, nor his demand for European countries to double their defense spending, nor even the digital oligarchy’s stranglehold on the US federal state. Le Pen, for her part, avoided speaking of his liberal economic vision, which is very different from the RN’s platform.
At a time when certain center-right politicians, such as the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, Friedrich Merz, have taken the risk of making controversial moves for rapprochement with the far right, the « MEGA summit » has shed light on its leaders’ ambiguities: By placing themselves in Trump’s light, they have also shined a spotlight on the unease provoked by their association with the most radical MAGA policies.
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