The meeting, hosted by the leader of Spain’s rightist Vox party, Santiago Abascal, began with an official dinner on Friday evening, Poland's PAP news agency reported.
On Saturday, two working sessions were scheduled to be held.
The get-together, held under the motto “Defending Europe,” was expected to focus on issues such as combating depopulation and protecting energy sovereignty, according to officials.
Radosław Fogiel, a spokesman for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, told reporters on Friday that the Madrid meeting would explore “ways to combat depopulation, ways to defend the energy sovereignty of European countries, as well as defence cooperation in the face of current threats, including those from the East, and the situation of the European manufacturing sector in a global context.”
In July last year, Poland’s conservative leader Jarosław Kaczyński signed a statement with several centre-right and conservative groupings represented in the European Parliament, according to media reports at the time.
The signatories included Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Abascal, Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s rightist League party, and France's presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, on behalf of their parties, as well as groupings from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Romania, according to the PAP news agency.
They called for a comprehensive, “back-to-basics” reform of the EU, with a sovereign role for European nations, arguing that people’s trust in the bloc’s institutions was being undermined by “a reinterpretation of the Treaties.”
Saturday’s meeting in Madrid was expected to be attended by Morawiecki, Orban and Le Pen, who leads France’s National Rally party, as well as conservative and rightist leaders from Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Lithuania.
(gs)
Source: PAP