Vox quits Meloni's ECR for Orban's new Patriots

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 5 - Spanish ultraconservative party Vox said Friday it was leaving Premier Giorgia Meloni's European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) caucus for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's new Patriots for Europe group.
    "Giorgia Meloni will always remain a friend and ally," said the nationalist party.
    The Patriots - Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO), Orban's Fidesz and the populist Czech ANO party led by Andrej Babis - are expected to formally launch next Monday.
    Orban has said he expects Italy's rightwing League party, currently in the Identity and Democracy (ID) caucus along with Marine Le Pen's National Rally, to sign up for the new group too.
    The FPO has left ID for Orban's group- As well as Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI), the ECR also features Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) party, which briefly flirted with leaving this week, and the Sweden Democrats among other hard right parties.
    It overtook the liberals to become the European Parliament's third biggest group behind the centre right European people's Party (EPP) and the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) in last month's European elections.
    It will just keep that place despite losing the Vox members, but it may be threatened if all the possible and touted new members of the Patriots join forces.
    However, former European Parliament president and centre-right Forza Italia (FI) leader dismissed the Patriots as a "non-influential" allegedly pariah group Friday saying "ID s turning into the Patriots for Europe, and now Vox has joined, but it is a non-influential group because no one then wants to talk to them". (ANSA).