Democracy is slowly coming to the European parliament. It’s hard to tell whether that, or the formation of a far-right group, is more shocking for the mainstream MEPs who provide most of the voting fodder.
One can deride the 20 or so MEPs from six countries who are set to form a new caucus on Wednesday that would give them speaking rights in parliament. A motley crew, ranging from holocaust deniers to gypsy-baiters, most people wouldn’t want to sit next to them on a bus never mind in a parliament. But they don’t particularly like each other any more than most like them.
It’s the EU’s expansion to Romania and Bulgaria on January 1st that has made the far-right nightmare, long talked-about in Strasbourg, close to coming true. Veterans like Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front now have allies in the requisite five European countries to form a group. Bulgaria’s anti-Roma Ataka party and the nationalist Great Romania party of Corneliu Vadim Tudor are set to join what could be known, evocatively, as "Europe of the Fatherlands" or "Identity, Sovereignty, Tradition".
But they would not even be talking to each other if it were not for the consensus-cloying way the parliament works.
Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs on