By Kerry Picket – The Washington Times – Monday, February 24, 2025
A delegation of European conservative leaders agrees that President Trump’s triumphant return to the White House after four years in political exile has helped inspire a populist, MAGA-style resurgence across their respective countries.
Members of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party are part of a center-right political group of members in the European Parliament, launched in 2009.
A 15-member delegation traveled to Washington last week to attend the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, where they networked with their American conservative counterparts and exchanged ideas and political strategies.
“We want to take part of this conservative revolution that is going on in all corners of the free world,” said George Simion, leader of Romania’s nationalist party Alliance for the Union of Romanians. He was elected last month to be the ECR’s vice president.
Provisional results confirmed that mainstream conservatives led by Friedrich Merz had won Germany’s national elections. Alternative for Germany almost doubled its support, the strongest showing for a conservative party in the country since World War II.
Mr. Simion told The Washington Times he was impressed by some of the marquee speakers at CPAC, including tech billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk.
“I just listened to Elon Musk. He inspired us. He tweeted from ‘MAGA to MEGA,’ so this is a source of inspiration about organizing conservative ideas, about putting the focus where it should be, on our values, on our identity,” said Mr. Simion, referring to how European conservatives are adopting Mr. Trump’s signature MAGA to “Make Europe Great Again.”
“I see that MAGA culture was very important in President Trump winning the election, and I see people that understand that freedom isn’t won forever,” Mr. Simion said. “You must fight for it each day. And I see the representatives that are in constant dialogue.”
ECR Secretary-General Antonio Giordano, deputy of the Brothers of Italy Party, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, said the most important thing about Mr. Trump is the “confirmation that conservative values can always win again.”
“He was resilient. He faced a very difficult period between the two [elections], but in any case, he is very strong, and he affirms his anti-woke values,” Mr. Giordano said.
“In general, every conservative thinks to make his nation great again. And this is something that is very important for our conservatives,” he said.
At the conference, Mr. Trump met with Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Vice President J.D. Vance received a cold reception at a Munich security conference this month after challenging European leaders on free speech and immigration. ECR members lauded Mr. Vance for his comments.
“What Vance stated was very important,” Robert Roos, a former Dutch politician who served in the European Parliament, told The Times.
“If the European bureaucrats are afraid of their own voters, there’s nothing America can do for you. And he is right,” Mr. Roos said. “We have to clean up our own mess, and then we can cooperate with the United States again. I’m sure that the United States is absolutely not willing to work with the EU bureaucracy, the unelected commission.”
Stephen Bartulica, who has served as a member of the Croatian parliament since 2020 and represents his country in the European Parliament, said he “welcomed” Mr. Vance’s speech and believed it was “completely justified.”
“European elites, frankly, do not believe in freedom of speech. They want to control speech, they want to regulate speech, and they see themselves more as masters than servants,” he said. “They don’t have confidence in the judgment of ordinary people to decide for themselves what is right and wrong.”
Mr. Bartulica said the ECR will fight the Digital Service Act, which would enable mass censorship throughout Europe.
It is not the first time European conservative leaders adopted MEGA as a rallying cry.
At a “Make Europe Great Again” summit in Madrid, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told fellow conservative leaders, “Trump’s tornado has changed the world in just a couple of weeks.” Among the attendees were Marine Le Pen of France, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and Italy’s Matteo Salvini.
“Yesterday, we were the heretics,” Mr. Orban said. “Now we are the mainstream.”
