Brussels police shuts down Orbán's European right-wing conference shortly after it began

Barely two hours after it started, Brussels police arrived at the venue of the NATCON conference and informed the organizers that they were shutting it down, Politico has reported. The paper’s reporter overheard a police officer telling one of the organizers that it was “due to the possibility of public disorder” that they were terminating the event. This happened shortly before Nigel Farage, the former chairman of UKIP and vehement pro-Brexit campaigner was set to give his keynote speech at 11 am. According to the programme, the event opened at 9 am.

In spite of this, according to the event’s X (formerly Twitter) account, Farage was still able to deliver his speech. Politico reports that the police – who left at first, but returned around 12:45 – had Anthony Gilland, chief of staff at MCC Brussels sign a document. He told the paper that the reason for the conservative gathering being shut down was because a counter-protest had been announced for around 5 pm and “the police are not able to protect free speech at this event”. MCC’s Brussels office also uploaded a video of the signing, where the police were citing the mayor’s orders, although the video was cut shortly after the request for an explanation.

“It’s really something out of a tinpot dictatorship,” Frank Füredi, head of MCC’s Brussels office, which is one of the organizers, said, reacting to the news. “They’re trying to use a technical reason to make a political point. They told the owner that if it doesn’t get shut down they’re gonna cut the electricity.”

“The Brussels left, the leadership of the city and the activists of the radical left tried to prevent the meeting of the national conservatives from being held” – Viktor Orbán’s Political Director, Balázs Orbán (no relation to the PM) posted on Facebook shortly before the document was signed. Orbán, who is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees at MCC said that “they can’t bear to have the European voices which stand up for national sovereignty, peace, and against migration being heard” and claimed that the organizers had been threatened and blackmailed.

Finding a location for the event wasn’t easy to begin with after the first, and then the second reserved venue backed out shortly before the conference was set to begin. In the end, the Claridge venue hosted the event, where according to the program, former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman and French politician Éric Zemmour would also have spoken on Tuesday, while former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán were supposed to address those gathered on Wednesday.