The Conference of the European Nationalist Right in Brussels was suspended on Wednesday. A ban order issued by the mayor of the town hosting the event was criticized by the Belgian political class.
The headliners of the conference said they saw practices reminiscent of the Soviet era. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo denounced the elected official's initiative in a tweet posted early in the evening. But the far right was not the only one to criticize this decision, with Rishi Sunak, the head of the British government, condemning a decision that was "damaging to freedom of expression and the democracy that results from it," and the Belgian Council of State suspended the event on Wednesday morning. The conference was to bring together personalities from the nationalist and eurosceptic camp, including Eric Zemmour, Viktor Orban, Nigel Farage, and Nigel Farage, a big supporter of Brexit. Viktor Orban is in Brussels for the European summit on Wednesday and Thursday. He is expected to focus mainly on boosting the EU's competitiveness, with a discussion planned on Iran's recent attack on Israel. The organizers of the event had to find an emergency fallback solution on Monday, after being rejected for the second time in a week by the venue which was to host them. In Brussels, this decision to ban the conference was strongly condemned. Several voices were raised to denounce the decision to give the conference free publicity to a confidential far-right event, reinforcing their discourse. "The Green Deal has failed, farmers are suffering across Europe, European competitiveness has declined, the migration crisis is greater than before, the war in Ukraine continues. They have not kept their promises, they must go," he continued to applause, to applause from the crowd in Brussels. 'I would have liked the French president to do the same, but unfortunately that was not the case,' he said.