Patriots Take EU Parliament to Court Over Undemocratic Cordon Sanitaire
1st October 2024
The national conservative Patriots for Europe (PfE) group, the third largest party family in Brussels with 84 MEPs, has officially launched a lawsuit against the European Parliament at the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). PfE aims to overturn the mainstream parties’ cordon sanitaire, which strips the group of all its earmarked leading positions in the Parliament’s governing bodies—even at the expense of violating the institutions’ own internal rules.
The right-wing group is home to parties such as the French National Rally, the Hungarian Fidesz, the Italian Lega, the Austrian FPÖ, the Czech ANO, and the Portuguese Chega. Many of these won the European elections in their respective countries and remain the most popular parties to this day (the FPÖ won the general elections in Austria just two days ago). Yet, the mainstream still believes it’s justified to exclude the PfE from power on account of it being “far-right.”