When the BBC’s Panorama programme profiled Nigel Farage earlier this week it raised the issue of UKIP’s, and their European Group’s, use of EU funding. Little did they know that, only a few days later, UKIP’s ‘Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy’ group (EFDD) would be dissolved – making the issue of how to spend the money suddenly less acute… for the time being.
For UKIP the collapse of EFDD Group means in practice that its MEPs will lose access to significant amounts of EU funding, and will also lose speaking time at the European Parliament.
What options does Farage have?
European Parliament Political Groups require at least 25 MEPs – from seven different countries – to form. The basis for UKIP’s Group only just met the requirements to form meaning that today’s decision by a Latvian MEP, Iveta Grigule, to leave brought the whole Group down. As ever the reasons behind this decision are sketchy. The EFDD Group claims that the European People’s Party (EPP) Chairman, Manfred Weber and European Parliament President, Martin Schulz, told her she must resign from the EFDD Group in order to attain the presidency of the Parliamentary delegation to Kazakstan. It is also likely that UKIP’s earlier insistence that Neil Hamilton should be Deputy General Secretary of the EFDD didn’t help Group cohesion.
To survive this crisis the EFDD must find a new MEP from a country not already in their Group. For UKIP and the Italian 5 Star Movement (who together dominate the EFDD) the choice is stark. Will they open up to more hard-core far right parties from other countries, as has already been the case when they let the Sweden Democrats in? Could they possibly be open to discussions with other right-wing populist parties like the Austrian Freedom Party?
If no solution is readily available it could certainly create room for manoeuver for the French ‘Front National’ and Marine Le Pen to potentially win over remaining EFDD Members to her attempted Group formation.
The big French daily Le Figaro mistakenly headlined today's development: “UKIP has been dissolved”. But for Farage these could be testing times in Brussels, just at the very time when he is pre-occupied with political developments at home.