Organizers were forced to change the venue twice due to threats from Antifa anarchist extremists and bullying from Brussels’ mayor. Finally a venue, owned by a businessman of Tunisian origin, had agreed to host the event at the last minute. Far-left extremist groups have announced a protest against the conference for later on Tuesday amid heavy armed police presence. Wednesday’s session, where Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is scheduled to speak, is still hanging in the balance.
Event organizer Yoram Hazony, chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, said in his introductory remarks that Brussels’ mayor was trying to stop the conference, which he interpreted as a pre-election stunt from the socialist mayor. “Our adversaries find us so frightening, that they cannot allow us to speak. So frightening is the idea of national conservatism.
We do not know whether we are going to win this time, but what we know is that we are going to win. We will win because we are asking for democracy and decency. This will triumph over craziness that is trying to pass today as democracy.
In his speech, Polish conservative MEP Ryszard Legutko spoke about the term “ever closer union” found in the EU’s charter. The concept points towards the growth of supranational institutions that are increasingly taking away powers and competences from nation-states. This is how “ever closer union” is being interpreted today by the ruling elite in Brussels, who take it as a green light to assume more and more power. However, the idea that the EU institutions can be closer to European citizens than elected national institutions offends human intelligence, pointed out the Polish MEP. Since the European Union continues to shift powers from member states and from national institutions, the drive towards an ever closer union is simply side stepping and violating existing rules, said Legutko.
He continued by saying that the EU institutions have only been able to increase their power so rapidly, because the governments of France and Germany have allowed this to happen to their own benefit. Ordinary European citizens have not endorsed this power grab though. Acquisition of power by EU is inevitably accompanied by the restriction of sovereignty of smaller nations, especially of those in Eastern Europe. The EU institutions can, as a result of concentrating power, bully and punish smaller EU members, which have no power to respond in kind. This is a version of colonialism, said Prof. Legutko.
This is internal colonialism in the name of progress”, he added. The colonizers reside in the bureaucratic structures of Brussels, but they are challenged by the current national conservative push-back and sooner or later they will be forced to leave in shame,
