BRUSSELS, April 17 () –
The Belgian Council of State has authorized the second day of the meeting of leaders of the European extreme right in a district of Brussels after it was vetoed the day before by a municipal authority, generating a protest from the prime ministers of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, and from Italy, Giorgia Meloni, and forcing the Belgian Prime Minister, the liberal Alexander de Croo, to come forward declaring “unacceptable” and “unconstitutional” that the meeting be prohibited.
In an extraordinary meeting late on Tuesday, the Council of State examined the organizers' complaint against the decision of the mayor of the Saint-Josse-ten-Noode district, Emir Kir, to send the Police to the site of the event on Tuesday. meeting to prevent it from taking place when it had already been underway for several hours.
The city of Brussels is divided into 19 districts or “communes” with their own powers and mayors, which led the organizers to look for different locations for their annual convention when they were successively denied permission in two other districts.
The National Conference of Conservatives annually brings together around forty European personalities from the extreme right and the ultra-conservative right, such as the Frenchman Eric Zemmour, the British euroskeptic Nigel Farage, the MEP of the Belgian extreme right from Vlaams Belang, Tom Vandendriessche, or the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban.
On Tuesday they were scheduled to meet in a reserved space in the Saint-Josse neighborhood, very close to the European neighborhood where the European institutions are located and where a summit of EU leaders will be held this Wednesday and Thursday. With the meeting already underway, Kir ordered the Police to prevent the political event, although the agents deployed chose to prevent the entry of more participants but did not act to stop the convention inside.
Among the first reactions, the Hungarian Prime Minister, whose intervention is announced for this Wednesday, condemned the police action on social networks and assured “they will not give up.” “I guess they couldn't stand free speech anymore. The last time they wanted to silence me with the police was in 1988, when the communists unleashed it on me,” he concluded.
Later, the Italian Meloni revealed that she had contacted De Croo to ask for explanations for the prohibition of an event to which “heads of government and national and European parliamentarians” were summoned and thanked the Belgian president for his forceful reaction to the “unjustifiable abuse” against freedom of expression of attendees.
Indeed, the prime minister reacted in a brief statement spread on social networks to consider what happened “unacceptable.” “Municipal autonomy is a cornerstone of our democracy but it can never annul the Belgian Constitution, which has guaranteed freedom of expression and peaceful assembly since 1830. Prohibiting political meetings is unconstitutional. Final point,” he stressed.
“Neither in Etterbeek, nor in Brussels city nor in Saint-Josse is the extreme right welcome,” argued, for his part, Emir Kir, alluding to the other districts that also put obstacles in the way of holding the event. In subsequent statements, the mayor defended that the ban responded to an evaluation of the risk of public disorder by the competent body in Belgium.
