Preliminary results of the June 6-9 elections show that ECR and ID have a combined total of about 130 votes. The vote has reshuffled the cards in the European Parliament, and the ID group, which is a home to the FPO, gained new partners, such as lawmakers from Portugal and Croatia, lawmaker from the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), Roman Haider, said.
"As you know, we have a common group with the ECR in the Council of Europe. So why not in the EP? We are working on that, and we will see the outcome in three weeks' time. If we succeed in building a joint group, this group will overtake the socialist group and will be the second largest in the EP," Haider said.
Furthermore, there are about 100 unattached lawmakers in the new edition of the parliament, and the ID is keen to welcome some of them, Haider also said.
"Viktor Orban's Fidesz, the AUR [Alliance for the Union of Romanians] from Romania and some other parties are not yet members either of the ID or the ECR … So there is a chance to form a big right-oriented group, or at least get some new members for our ID group," the Austrian lawmaker added.
The elections' results showed that in many of the EU member states, right-wing parties did quite well. Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party emerged victorious in France's European polls, finishing with over 15 percentage points ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron's centrist coalition. The FPO also topped the list in Austria.
At the same time, in Germany, the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz came third, while the centrist-right opposition alliance CDU/CSU won the elections with 30% of the votes, followed by the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), who got 16%.
"People have made a clear statement across Europe that they do not agree with the Green Deal disaster, which only leads to the deindustrialization and destruction of our economy and our prosperity," Haider concluded.