In Brussels, a conference with Eric Zemmour, Nigel Farage and Viktor Orban interrupted by the police for security reasons

The mayor of the Brussels municipality of Saint-Josse, where the meeting was to be held, explained that he had issued a banning order “to guarantee public safety”.

On Tuesday April 16, the Brussels authorities ordered the shutdown of a controversial meeting of representatives of the nationalist right, a few months before the European elections. Among them are the French Eric Zemmour, the British Nigel Farage, at the origin of Brexit, and the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. This decision by the authorities follows a banning order issued by the mayor of the Brussels commune of Saint-Josse, Emir Kir, where the meeting was organized. The elected official explained on Facebook that he had taken this order “to guarantee public safety”. “The far right is not welcome”he added.

A decision strongly denounced inside the room, where several hundred people, including many nationalist and Eurosceptic conservative MEPs, participated in the gathering, according to AFP journalists. “We are really in the register of old-fashioned communism, basically, if you don’t agree with me, you should be banned”castigated Nigel Farage.

Around 3:30 p.m., surrounded by cameras, Eric Zemmour appeared in front of the door of the conference room, to which the police blocked his access. The former presidential candidate denounced a “dictatorship”. “The socialist mayor Emir Kir (…) uses the police as a private militia to ban the Brussels conference of which I am the guest with Viktor Orban and Nigel Farage”wrote the president of Reconquest on X. For his part, Viktor Orban deplored an attack on freedom of expression. “The last time they wanted to silence me by sending the police was in 1988 with the communists”reacted the Hungarian nationalist leader on Xin allusion to the Soviet era.