European Far-Right Leaders Flock to CPAC to Build MAGA-Inspired Alliance

On 21 Feb­ru­ary 2025, Eurac­tiv report­ed that promi­nent Euro­pean far-right politi­cians are attend­ing the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) in Wash­ing­ton to align them­selves with Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion and move­ment. The arti­cle begins:

Lead­ing EU con­ser­v­a­tive and far-right fig­ures will be tak­ing the stage at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) in Wash­ing­ton and schmooz­ing with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s top guns with one goal in mind: bring MAG­A­’s impact to Europe. Like groupies at a con­cert, the Euro­pean far-right is flock­ing to Wash­ing­ton to catch a glimpse and maybe a self­ie of Don­ald Trump, Vice Pres­i­dent J.D. Vance and their allies at the decades-old annu­al meet­ing of Amer­i­ca’s con­ser­v­a­tives. CPAC this year is more than a con­fer­ence: it is a sig­nalling device for Europe’s right-of-the-right that they are on the win­ning side of his­to­ry and hope for the ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’ (MAGA) wave to reach Europe’s coasts. “Prox­im­i­ty to pow­er, and the per­cep­tion of prox­im­i­ty to pow­er, is pow­er,” Jere­my Shapiro, research direc­tor at the Euro­pean Coun­cil for For­eign Rela­tions think tank told Eurac­tiv. Right-wing nota­bles expect­ed to speak at CPAC include France’s Jor­dan Bardel­la and Sarah Knafo, Italy’s Gior­gia Mel­oni, Slo­va­ki­a’s Robert Fico, Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tives and Reformists chair­man Mateusz Moraw­iec­ki, as well as the UK’s Nigel Farage and Liz Truss…

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Key Points:

• Euro­pean right-wing lead­ers like France’s Bardel­la, Italy’s Mel­oni and Slo­va­ki­a’s Fico are attend­ing CPAC to strength­en “transat­lantic patri­ot­ic ties.”
• Trump’s 2024 elec­tion vic­to­ry has gal­va­nized Europe’s far-right move­ments around shared oppo­si­tion to migra­tion and pro­gres­sive policies.
• Despite ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences, Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion serves as a uni­fy­ing fig­ure for Euro­pean con­ser­v­a­tives seek­ing polit­i­cal momentum.
• CPAC has expand­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly with spin-offs in Hun­gary, Japan, Argenti­na and Israel, cre­at­ing a glob­al net­work of right-wing movements.

The Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) is an annu­al event orga­nized by the Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive Union (ACU) since 1974, serv­ing as a major gath­er­ing for con­ser­v­a­tive activists, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and politi­cians. Orig­i­nal­ly focused on pro­mot­ing con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples and can­di­dates, CPAC has evolved into a glob­al plat­form with edi­tions held in coun­tries such as Hun­gary, Japan, and Brazil, aim­ing to unite con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments world­wide. The con­fer­ence fea­tures speech­es from high-pro­file fig­ures, includ­ing for­mer U.S. pres­i­dents, and dis­cus­sions on issues like immi­gra­tion and oppo­si­tion to social­ism. In recent years, CPAC has faced crit­i­cism for embrac­ing far-right pop­ulism and exclud­ing jour­nal­ists from main­stream out­lets deemed “left-wing.” It has also been accused of tol­er­at­ing extrem­ist views among some atten­dees, rais­ing con­cerns about its role in mod­ern con­ser­vatism. The CPAC con­fer­ences have recent­ly tak­en on a greater role in the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA) in the same way as the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Conferences.

Dis­claimer: This post was gen­er­at­ed using AI, with added con­text where pos­si­ble. Please ver­i­fy all infor­ma­tion before using. Images are also AI-gen­er­at­ed and are for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es only—they are meant to rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als con­cerned but should not be under­stood as “real world” photography.