Europe’s far right has chosen a Danish MEP who believes Muslims are rapists to speak in a showcase ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ pre-EU election debate in Maastricht next month — but stressed he is not their lead candidate.
The 36-year old Anders Vistisen, from the Danish People’s Party, was picked by colleagues to speak in the debate on behalf of the Identity and Democracy Group (ID) in the European Parliament, an ID spokesman told EUobserver on Thursday (7 March).
He will speak alongside the other European Parliament groups’ top candidates for the EU election, in a roll call which so far includes European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) group and Luxembourg’s EU commissioner Nicolas Schmit from the centre-left Socialists & Democrats (S&D) group.
The line-up also includes one of two German and Dutch MEPs, Terry Reintke and Bas Eickhout, who are the joint top candidates of the European Greens group, and Austrian communist Walter Baier from the (far-left) Left group.
The other EU parliament groups — the liberal Renew Europe and the rightwing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) — haven’t named top candidates yet.
The candidates (better known in EU circles as “Spitzenkandidaten” from the German) are meant to be in the running for EU top jobs, as well as being their groups’ electoral figureheads.
They’re normally selected via a party congress, but the eurosceptic ID group, which has boycotted the Spitzenkandidaten process, said Vistisen was chosen informally and only for the purposes of the Maastricht event.
Andrew Rettman