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 threshold 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.

For more on this subject, read Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.