Le Pen, Orban to skip Salvini's meet

(ANSA) - Rome, April 4 - French and Hungarian rightist leaders Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban will not attend League leader and Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini's meeting in Milan Monday aimed at forging a European-election alliance between 'sovereigntist' parties, sources said Thursday.
    Le Pen will not attend the gathering, the spokesman for her National Rally party, Alain Vizier, told ANSA Thursday.
    Le Pen is busy on the election trail, he said.
    This weekend she will be in Brittany while next week she has other appointments in other parts of France, Vizier said.
    Orban will also skip the meeting called by Euroskeptic and anti-migrant League leader Salvini, a source close to the Nepszava newspaper said Thursday.
    Orban, the source said, does not want to break with the European People's Party (EPP), and is hoping to avoid expulsion from it and steer it rightwards after the May European elections.
    Therefore, the source said, he is "not interested" in Salvini's initiative.
    Interior Minister and Deputy Premier Salvini is organising an event in Milan to bring together "all European allies of the League" to "propose a reform to the European Union", he said last month.
    "About 20 movements to propose a new Europe of nations with," Salvini said.
    Among the 'sovereigntist' rightwing nationalist parties invited were Orban's Fidesz, Le Pen's National Rally (formerly Front National), Germany's AfD, and Poland's Law and Justice party.
    Salvini aims to forge a panEuropean alliance for the European elections at the end of May.
    But Orban's Fidesz is not sending any representative to the Milan gathering, the newspaper source said Thursday.