League joining Patriots group in EU says Salvini

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 8 - Deputy Premier and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini said Monday that his League party was joining Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's new Patriots for Europe group at the EU level.
    "After a long period of work, the big group of Patriots, which will be decisive to change the future of this Europe, comes to life in Brussels today," Salvini said via social media.
    The League had been in the Identity and Democracy (ID) caucus along with Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN), among others.
    Orban's spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs announced on X later on Monday that RN had also joined the 'Patriots'.
    Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO), a former ID member, was one of the first parties to join the new group.
    On Friday Spanish ultraconservative party Vox said it was leaving Premier Giorgia Meloni's European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) caucus for the Patriots for Europe group.
    Salvini also commented on the aftermath of the second round of voting in France's parliamentary elections, in which RN was beaten back to third place with the help of tactical voting after coming first in the first round.
    The leftwing New Popular Front came first and President Emmanuel Macron's centrist Together alliance was second.
    "The 'everyone against Le Pen' band assembled by Macron won the elections but doesn't have the numbers to govern," Salvini said.
    "And 143 RN MPs will go to parliament in Paris, never so many in history with an increase in votes from 33 to 37% between the first and second rounds.
    "The 'all against one' reduced the number of seats, but not the level of support for Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, to whom I send a big hug.
    "There were celebrations on in the streets by communists, pro-Islamists and anti-Semites, hooligans who attacked the police with stones in several cities, chaos in parliament".
    (ANSA).