WTI Trades At Multi-Month High On Middle East, Hurricane Concerns
Hurricane Beryl strengthened overnight to a powerful Category 5 storm as it churned in the Caribbean Sea. The Cat. 5 storm is the earliest on record in the Atlantic hurricane season and has caused concern among energy traders about potential Gulf Coast disruptions.
On Monday morning, Beryl made landfall on Grenada’s Carriacou Island in the Caribbean Sea with winds around 150 mph. According to NOAA data dating back to 1851, this is the strongest known storm to traverse the Grenadines area.
Beryl’s arrival marks an early start to what some meteorologists had said would be an active hurricane season. The storm’s intensity has spooked energy traders, sending West Texas Intermediate (occasionally called Texas Light Sweet) to two-month highs on Monday.
Bloomberg noted, “Oil futures rose Tuesday, trading at their highest since late April, with gains tied to expectations for heavy travel around the Independence Day holiday and concerns that powerful Hurricane Beryl could later cause disruptions to offshore crude production in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Senior analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya from Swissquote Bank, in a note to clients, emphasized that while Beryl may not immediately impact operations in the Gulf of Mexico, it could potentially cause disruptions later in the week.
Computer models show the storm making landfall on or around Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula around Friday morning and possibly curving north towards the US Gulf Coast afterward.
A combination of tensions in the Middle East, robust demand ahead of July 4, a big short squeeze, and a rapid start to the Atlantic hurricane season are some factors driving WTI higher, up 10% since April 26.
As we predicted on June 6, an active Atlantic hurricane season with storms like Beryl could potentially disrupt major US Gulf Coast refineries. This disruption could drive prices at the gas pump to the politically sensitive $4-a-gallon level for the Biden administration ahead of the presidential elections this fall.
If you are really struggling with the high cost of living, I want you to know that you aren’t alone. In recent months, I have been hearing from so many people that feel like they are drowning financially. Have you experienced a palpable sense of panic when you compare your rising bills to the level of income that you are currently bringing in? So many people out there are stressed out of their minds because it has become such a struggle to pay the bills each month. As I discussed a few days ago, a typical U.S. household must now spend $1,069 more a month just to buy the exact same goods and services that it did three years ago. Over the course of an entire year, that is almost an extra $13,000 dollars. Month after month, prices just keep going higher, but those that are running things continue to insist that everything is just fine.
No, everything is not just fine.
Last week, a TikTok video about rising grocery prices at Walmart quickly garnered more than a million views. The person that made the video found a grocery order that he had placed two years ago, and he decided to hit the “Reorder All” button to see what that same order would cost today…
A recent TikTok video has gone viral, showing a user’s surprising experience with Walmart’s grocery prices. The user explained in his video that he tried to use the “Reorder All” button for an order he placed two years ago, which originally cost $126.67. To his shock, the same order would now cost $414.39.
I was quite stunned by this video.
Many of the things that I regularly purchase at the grocery store have doubled or more than doubled in price, but in this case the total cost of the grocery order had more than tripled…
The TikTok (@sewerlidd) explained that the original $126.16 purchase was for a month’s worth of groceries, which included 53 items.
“A whole month of groceries just for me,” he said in the video.
The total was updated to $414.39, almost quadrupling.
“I feel like I’m going to be sick,” he said.
Needless to say, this video has generated a ton of discussion online.
When Walmart was asked about this, they responded by saying that the primary reason there was such a difference is because the person that made the video was attempting to order “discontinued items”…
Walmart representatives have responded, stating that the claims in the video are not accurate. According to them, the discrepancies in prices are due to discontinued items rather than actual inflation.
But this explanation certainly did not satisfy everyone.
Another person hit the “Reorder All” button on an old order, and that order went from $180 back then to $430 today…
Viewers expressed both shock and frustration in the comments.
“Now I feel a little less gaslit about grocery prices because it has gone crazy, and it’s not just me!” wrote one person.
“Walmart, can you explain yourself, please,” added another.
A fellow shopper said they used to spend $180 for two weeks’ worth of groceries and are now spending over $430 for the same amount.
If you think that the price of groceries is not a problem, I have a challenge for you.
Fill up a grocery cart all the way to the very top with items that you typically eat, and try to keep the final bill under 300 dollars.
If you are smart, you can do it, but it won’t be easy.
In the old days, you could buy a used vehicle for 300 dollars.
Now, many people burn through more than 300 dollars in just one trip to the grocery store.
This is just one of the reasons why inflation has become such a huge political issue.
According to Gallup, inflation was not really considered to be an important issue at all prior to 2022…
For the third year in a row, the percentage of Americans naming inflation or the high cost of living as the most important financial problem facing their family has reached a new high. The 41% naming the issue this year is up slightly from 35% a year ago and 32% in 2022. Before 2022, the highest percentage mentioning inflation was 18% in 2008. Inflation has been named by less than 10% in most other readings since the question was first asked in 2005.
The last three years have been an inflationary nightmare, and no matter how much our leaders try to deny it, a lot more inflation is on the way.
Things are particularly bad in our major cities. In fact, it is being reported that Manhattan is the most expensive place to live in the United States by a wide margin…
The New York borough of Manhattan is the most expensive place to live in the U.S. — and the cost of living in the No. 2 place isn’t even close.
The cost of living in Manhattan is more than twice the national average. The second- and third-most expensive places are Honolulu and San Jose, California, but in comparison, they are much more affordable. Manhattan is 24% more expensive than Honolulu and 30% more expensive than San Jose.
It isn’t a big mystery why this is the case.
When our leaders pumped trillions upon trillions of dollars into the system, the financial markets benefitted greatly.
So Manhattan is swimming in cash, and prices there have gone into the stratosphere.
Many of us relentlessly warned about what would happen when our leaders flooded the system with cash, and now we are facing economic distortions that are extremely painful.
For most Americans, prices have been rising much faster than their paychecks.
As a result, our national standard of living has been steadily declining.
And now we have entered a time when it appears that economic conditions are really slowing down.
Ford Motor is preparing for a new round of layoffs for its salaried workers in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The company in March last year announced plans to reduce structural costs of up to $3 billion at its gas-powered vehicle unit. In August, Ford said it would cut a total of 3,000 salaried and contract jobs, mostly in North America and India.
Over the past several years, our politicians in Washington have borrowed and spent trillions upon trillions of dollars, and the “experts” at the Federal Reserve have pumped trillions upon trillions of dollars into the financial system.
All that did was buy us a little more time.
All that did was delay the inevitable.
Now we are facing a crisis of absolutely epic proportions, and the economic suffering that we are currently experiencing is nothing compared to the economic suffering that is ahead of us.
Despite the generally negative attitude toward gold you hear in the mainstream financial media, the vast majority of professional investors in North America own at least some gold and the number has been growing in recent years.
A World Gold Council survey of 525 North American investors found a steadily growing trend of gold ownership. The survey included large institutions, consultants, and financial advisors.
In 2018, 69 percent of the survey respondents said they had some allocation to gold. In the most recent survey, 85 percent reported owning some gold.
Given all of the negative talk we hear about gold in the financial media, this seems like an exceptionally high number. But digging in deeper, we find that just over a quarter of the investors who reported owning gold hold less than 1 percent of assets under management in the yellow metal.
About half of the respondents said they held at least 1 percent of their portfolio in gold. About 24 percent have an allocation of 3 percent or more.
Over one-quarter of respondents said they plan to increase gold allocations in the next 12 to 18 months. That was more than double the number who said they plan to reduce their exposure to gold.
According to the World Gold Council, “At the aggregate level, North American investors seem likely to increase their allocations to gold over the year ahead. We recently flagged that gold is historically under-owned in the U.S., signaling the potential for headroom and supporting a positive outlook for gold ownership.”
The reasons these investors reported holding gold include its role as a portfolio diversifier and as a hedge against inflation. They also reported that they believe holding gold decreases portfolio risk.
Gold’s role as a “proven diversifier, especially in periods of financial turmoil and economic uncertainty” was the most commonly cited reason for increasing gold allocations with 46 percent of the sample choosing it as one of their top three reasons for holding gold.
But the survey revealed that professional investors aren’t aware of gold’s solid long-term returns. Sixty percent of the respondents said gold tends to deliver less than sparkling returns compared to other asset classes.
In fact, gold has outperformed most asset classes over the last 25 years. In fact, with an average 8 percent return each year, gold has outperformed equities over the last quarter century.
About 21 percent of the survey respondents acknowledged that gold delivers “excellent” comparative long-term returns.
According to the survey, a lot of professional investors also fail to grasp gold’s liquidity. Just under half of respondents agreed that gold is a liquid asset. Almost a quarter of respondents with no gold holdings cited liquidity as a barrier to investing in gold.
Again, the perception doesn’t match up with reality. In fact, the gold market is more liquid than several major financial markets, including the euro/yen and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The trading volume for gold averaged approximately $163 billion per day in 2023.
One of the things that makes gold so liquid is the fact that it is valued around the world. Whether you go to Europe, Asia, or South America, people recognize gold as a store of value. You will never be left without a buyer if you want to sell gold.
The survey shows that there are plenty of misconceptions about gold within the investment community, but despite the generally negative messaging in the financial media, most professional investors in North America do recognize the value of holding at least a small amount of gold within their portfolios.
A cross-border trucker-led convoy will be rolling through parts of West Texas on Monday to spotlight everything from violence against drivers, low wages to poor working conditions in both Mexico and the U.S., organizers said.
The convoy — a joint action between the U.S.-based Truckers Movement for Justice (TMJ) and the Mexico-based United Mexican Carriers (TAMEXUN) and the Binational Carriers Union (STB) — will consist of about 75 truckers from both sides of the border on a 150-mile trek from Odessa, Texas, through Kermit and Monahans, Texas.
“TMJ, STB and TAMEXUN are fighting for the rights of the drivers to organize and to negotiate collectively with trucking companies,” Billy Randel, founder of TMJ, told FreightWaves in an interview.
Randel and members of TMJ, STB and TAMEXUN said they are seeking “respect” and “justice” from the trucking industry and want government action or changes in the industry.
“In one word, we want justice. We’re all talking about justice for truck drivers. We carry the backs of the world on us,” said Jazmin Lovos, a member of TMJ. Lovos and her husband Oscar are truck drivers in the Permian Basin.
The majority of drivers participating in the Texas protest are owner-operators working in the oilfields of West Texas or Mexico-based B1 visa drivers hauling goods into the U.S.
Across the border, drivers from Mexico said they are often recruited by U.S.-based trucking companies initially offering pay rates of 30 cents a mile, then later the company will reduce a Mexico-based driver’s rate to 19 cents a mile.
“There’s a lot of people who also care about the 19 cents a mile because they think they are making money with that,” Jesus Chuy, a driver from Mexico and member of STB, said. “The industries get the best of Mexican drivers with that.”
Randel said it doesn’t matter which side of the border truckers are from.
“We go back to the simple fact that trucking companies are using our brothers and sisters in Mexico, against our brothers and sisters in the United States,” Randel said. “This is why we have the solidarity, an alliance that we built with the TAMEXUN, STB and TMJ, we’ve got to fight.”
Poor working conditions for truck drivers in the U.S.
Oscar Lovos, a member of TMJ, and several other drivers said truckers have faced poor work conditions in the Permian Basin area of West Texas for years.
The Permian Basin is an oil and gas producing area mainly in West Texas, as well as southeastern New Mexico.
The issues drivers in the region face range from low wages, long waits to unload trucks, to companies that don’t pay for fuel surcharges, TMJ members said.
“I’ve been in the oil field for over 11 years, driving in the Permian Basin. The oil field has gone downhill tremendously. Inflation is going high, the price of oil is still high, but yet our wages are going lower and lower,” Lovos said. “It seems like every month they’re going to lower the rates on us. We’re barely surviving as it is.”
Lovo said being an oil field truck driver can be tough physically due to the condition of roads in the Permian Basin.
“The roads out here are extremely bad. Driving on these roads beat up our trucks, then we have to pay for repairs and nobody helps us with the repairs,” Lovo said.
Jazmin Lovo said truck drivers working in the oil fields often get stuck waiting in long lines when they are dropping off shipments. Many shippers in the Permian Basin don’t pay detention or demurrage fees to owner-operators, she said.
“Some days they spend a long, long time unloading the trucks and they don’t pay detention time or demurrage,” Jazmin Lovo said. “They use our trucks like a storage unit, like a warehouse. But if you’re going to rent a warehouse to have your stuff, you get charged. But the companies that hire us to carry the frac sand are not paying detention time.
Other complaints include the lack of adequate restrooms for drivers in the region.
“We’re lucky if they give us port-a-johns. We demand restrooms that have air conditioning in them. My wife Jazmin is a truck driver. Me as man, I don’t want to go inside of port-a-john when it’s 100 degrees outside. Do you think she wants to go in there? The restrooms they give are not fair, not right,” Oscar Lovo said.
Marco Mery, who drives trucks in the Permian Basin, said the detention times and road conditions cost them money.
“We don’t get any respect,” Mery said. “There’s too many things involved in being a driver. We have to pay to be a truck driver, owner-operators, we pay the insurance, the stickers, license plates and everything. Everything is a lot of money. And we don’t get that money back.”
Truck drivers in Mexico face theft and assault everyday
Across the border in Mexico, truck drivers face hijackings, theft, low wages and lack of adequate facilities, such as restrooms and rest areas, members of TAMEXUN and STB said.
“In Mexico, one of the biggest issues is there is absolutely no security for the drivers,” Chuy said. “Drivers are routinely beaten every day. There are trucks stolen from drivers every day and the National Guard and the federal government as well as the state governments do nothing to protect the drivers from assaults.”
In the first five months of 2024, Mexico totaled 700 cargo truck thefts, according to the National Association of Vehicle Tracking and Protection Companies (ANERPV).
More than 65% of cargo robberies involve the use of violence, according to ANERPV. The lack of cargo security is why many Mexican truck drivers choose to get a visa and work in the U.S., Chuy said.
“Drivers get assaulted from both government police as well as criminals,” Chuy said. “A driver was murdered earlier this year, killed while he was working. This is a struggle. We need respect and we need protection of law.”
Once Mexico-based drivers begin working in the U.S., trucking companies often use them to keep wages lower for U.S. drivers., Chuy said.
“Truck drivers from Mexico are routinely used to push down the wages and working conditions of American truck drivers,” Chuy said. “This is why we formed this alliance. We feel strongly that we need to equalize the working conditions for truck drivers in both countries, so we can all have a quality of life.”
Manuel Mendoza, president of TAMEXUN said truck drivers keep the economies of the U.S. and Mexico moving, but make very little money.
Truck driver salaries in Mexico averaged $4,400 in 2022.
“The truth is that every day there is more and more discrimination. Our work is made more humiliating, subjected to the whims of carriers, big businessmen who come from political parties,” Mendoza said. “We want better payments for our drivers. We don’t need brokers. We need to deal directly with the shippers so that we have a better life.”
The Trump Organization confirmed it will construct a new Trump Tower in Saudi Arabia, according to a company announcement Monday.
The firm, owned and led by Donald Trump since 1971 before he handed over the reins to his children upon winning the election to become the 45th president, announced it partnered with a Saudi-owned developer Dar Global to build the tower in Jeddah. It’s the first building that the Trump Organization would develop in the country.
“We are thrilled to expand our footprint in the Middle East and bring the Trump standard of luxury to the region through our long-standing relationship with Dar Global,” Eric Trump, the former president’s son and executive vice president of the company, said in a statement.
“This collaboration embodies our shared vision of creating landmark developments that exude luxury, quality, and sophistication.”
The head of Dar Global added that it is “delighted to strengthen our ongoing relationship with The Trump Organization and expand our portfolio by delivering premium properties to redefine Saudi Arabia’s high-growth real estate market.”
He added, “The new agreement in Saudi Arabia will leverage the strengths of both organizations to attract more international investors and vacationers.”
About two weeks ago, Dar Global announced it agreed to a licensing deal for a Trump International hotel building in Oman, although the building isn’t owned by the Trump Organization. The team that is working on the project is also headed by Eric Trump.
Some Democratic lawmakers have said that the Trump investments in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia could present a conflict of interest.
The Trump Organization is owned by a private trust that includes the former president as its sole beneficiary. It’s run by his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr..
The company was fined $1.6 million by a New York judge after it was accused by prosecutors of running a tax-fraud scheme. The organization denied any wrongdoing.
In February, another New York judge fined former President Trump $454 million in total penalties after ruling that his company and others inflated assets to boost his net worth and gain financial benefits.
Weeks later, the former president appealed the judgment, alleging that the court abused its discretion or “acted in excess of its jurisdiction.” He and his attorneys also accused the judge and attorney general of political bias, while arguing that neither he nor his company engaged in any wrongdoing.
In Germany, France, and even Belgium, the EU election results have created internal political crises. In some countries, new parliamentary elections have been called to clarify the political values and direction that voters want their respective countries to take.
At the same time, there has been little discussion as to which demographics have turned against the liberal status quo in Brussels the most.
Which social group has been the most opposed to EU bureaucracy and open borders.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, young people indicated their inability to lead a normal life within the European structure and its ideological backdrop.
They simply feel that they have no future because their current lives and the conditions in which they live, which appear to be objective, are in total chaos.
We are talking about a generation, people of an age who are no longer dependent but who have not yet been able to establish a stable existence of their own.
They are our children and grandchildren, not categories with an “X,” “Y” or “Z.” They are young people, “the envied age” of our elders, but also a generation doomed to be lost in terms of Europe’s situation and future vision. Moreover, their unacceptable alphabetical designation is reminiscent of the degenerate ideology that seeks to ensure that more and more “minority” groups form the fabric of civilized societies, with the result that all forms of division within nations are exacerbated, as is already the case in the international arena.
This fact is further proof that today, subjective will is overriding necessity and the objective values of the community.
Young people have clearly had enough of this, and their votes are a clear sign of it.
On June 9, they voted against it, trusting in the power of democracy and assuming that their demand for change would be understood by the officials at Brussels headquarters.
But tomorrow, when it is clear that the ladies and gentlemen who have been addressed are bureaucrats interested only and exclusively in maintaining their power, and have no regard for the interests of the people of Europe, there will be no other means left to those who want change but to blow up the increasingly petrified edifice.
The only question is whether we, the ancestors, the parents, will be offended by the efforts of our “impudent” successors, or whether we will accept that what we have done wrong, they will be able to put right, or at least try to.
Let them allow the truth to once again be the totality of objective facts, as opposed to the subjective will of those who see themselves as the chosen ones. Let them remove the vested interests that prevent normal functioning.
The rise of mis- and disinformation on social media and an increasing perception of bias in the reporting of legacy media outlets has led to trust in media institutions declining over the past years.
As Florian Zandt shows in the chart below, based on a recent Statista Consumer Insights survey of 38 countries shows, people’s trust or distrust of the media differs by geographic region.
For example, 41 percent of Serbian respondents said they didn’t trust the media when surveyed between April 2023 and March 2024. This can potentially be attributed to an increasing “culture of violence in the media” and a disregard for journalistic ethics in many outlets, according to a news article by Reporters Without Borders.
Serbia is followed by 38 percent of respondents in Greece and 27 percent of respondents in Hungary claiming a mistrust in media outlets.
On the other end of the spectrum are China (10 percent), Finland (8 percent) and Japan (6 percent).
20 out of 38 countries reported distrust percentages between 10 and 15 percent, including Canada, Germany (both 15 percent), Brazil (14 percent) and Italy (13 percent).
Looking at the rest of the top 10 countries in terms of GDP in 2024, 16 percent of survey participants in the United Kingdom and 18 percent of Indian respondents said they distrust news media, while this number was higher in the United States (20 percent) and France (21 percent).
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General revealed on Monday that the SBU foiled an alleged J6-like plot to seize power in Kiev the day prior by orchestrating a protest that would deliberately descend into a riot whose participants, including military personnel and PMCs, would then storm the Rada.
Zelensky has been fearmongering since November about a so-called “Maidan 3” that he claimed was being organized by Russia against him so it’s very likely that he’ll spin this latest development as proof of that supposed plot.
It serves his political interests to discredit the possibility that this was a truly homegrown regime change attempt which might even potentially be tied to disgruntled members of the military irrespective of whether they have any connection with former Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhny. He used to be Zelensky’s chief rival before being replaced and designated as the new Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK and was of the opinion that it had become impossible to attain Zelensky’s maximalist objectives in the conflict.
Observers should also remember that Zelensky’s term expired in late May so he’s illegitimate due to the compelling legal argument made by President Putin last month that the Speaker of the Rada is now the head of state if the Ukrainian Constitution is still being followed. Moreover, there’s a lot of anger over the country’s forcible conscription measures that have ramped up due to Russia’s fresh push in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region in early May, so genuine anti-government sentiment veritably exists nowadays.
It therefore can’t be ruled out that this was indeed the work of bonafide domestic dissidents with no relationship whatsoever to Russia despite whatever Kiev might claim. Lying about that country’s alleged connection to the conspirators serves the dual purpose of justifying further crackdowns on society while reminding the West of the supposed “Russian threat” ahead of next week’s NATO Summit in an attempt to pressure them into extending more meaningful support for Ukraine.
The timing with which everything just unfolded is also worthy of further examination keeping in mind that upcoming event. According to the Prosecutor General, the culprits began disseminating anti-government messages on social media in May and continued doing so into June, which was what presumably attracted the state’s attention. It can thus be surmised that the authorities were aware of everything about this plot from its early stages and that it accordingly never posed a credible threat.
The reason why it wasn’t busted right away could have been to identify the full extent of their plans and expose everyone else within this network in order to take them all down at once. That’s sensible enough, but there might have also been an ulterior motive at play too, namely to make sure that this story circulates in the run-up to the NATO Summit for Zelensky’s previously mentioned self-interested political reasons instead of prematurely introducing it into the global information ecosystem weeks in advance.
Moreover, seeing as how Ukraine has reportedly begun a military buildup along the Belarusian border, it’s possible that Kiev planned to make this J6-like news public around the same time in order to exploit predictable allegations of Russian involvement in the plot as the pretext for the aforesaid measures. In that way, this move could then be spun as “defensive” even though it’s arguably predicated on at least conveying an intent to threaten Russia’s mutual defense ally, the purpose of which was explained here.
Putting it all together, it appears as though the conspirators are homegrown dissidents without any ties to Russia, though they might have some connections to disgruntled members of the military. The authorities knew about their plans early on but declined to bust them right away since they wanted to obtain more information. The ulterior motive was to have this story coincide with the latest Belarusian tensions and the upcoming NATO Summit, however, thus possibly presaging more Western escalations.
You’ll Never Guess Which Nation Has The Most ‘Feminists’…
If you think feminism is a firmly established and respected concept globally, think again. In a recent survey by Ipsos, only 39 percent of respondents from 31 mostly high and upper-middle income countries said that they identified as feminists, while an average of 51 percent disagreed with this description for themselves.
In fact, as Statista’s Kathrina Buchholz reports, only two countries out of 31, India and Spain, had a majority agree that they saw themselves as feminists – despite a mixed records of gender rights in both nations.
The tally rises to a still meager seven countries when only counting the responses of women, showing that while some countries have big gender gaps in the response to this question, many do not.
In Japan, the country ranked lowest, 15 percent of both men and women agreed that they were feminists, while overall, 61 percent disagreed with the statement – highlighting the overall negative connotations connected with the concept of feminism in the country. Japan and second-lowest ranked South Korea have come under fire for a lack of women’s rights, lack of identification with feminism and the tendencies of a growing group of men that have been described as anti-feminist or even incel.
A new article by The Economist describes a backlash against feminism in the context of women excelling at universities while traditional role models long holding strong in society are fading. This observation is underscored by surveys finding that 79 percent of young South Korean men believed in reserve discrimination in 2021, while the same year, 43 percent of young Japanese men say they hated feminism.
Economic hardships hitting developed economies around the globe, but that seem most disruptive in East Asia, are adding to the feeling of unfairness when policies champion women.
An excess of men – a legacy of the now faded preference for sons – is also making life harder for males at work and in personal affairs like dating, which has been identified as another factor of frustration that sometimes comes to a boil online, the place where incel culture has been flourishing.
Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ), Czechia’s ANO, and Hungary’s Fidesz have formed a new right-wing coalition, the parties’ respective leaders announced at a joint press conference in Vienna on Sunday.
Herbert Kickl (FPÖ), Andrej Babis (ANO) and Viktor Orbán (Fidesz) announce new right-wing coalition in Vienna. (Facebook)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, and Austrian opposition leader Herbert Kickl said the new alliance would hopefully entice others to join and become the largest nationalist political group in the European Parliament.
“Today we are creating a political formation that will ‘forge ahead’ and very quickly become the strongest grouping and largest faction of the European right,” Orbán said.
The Hungarian prime minister expects this to happen within days, and then the “sky will be the limit.”
Orbán pointed out that the situation in Europe is clear, that European politics must change and change is needed in Europe.
He underlined that in 20 of the 27 EU member states, parties that promised change to the citizens won the European Parliament elections.
The Hungarian leader revealed the parties had adopted the Patriots’ manifesto, which summarizes the ideals and goals around which they are organizing their work.
According to Orbán, the European economy is in crisis, its weight is diminishing and the threat of terrorism and migration is constant. He warned of the ongoing war in Europe’s backyard that the European liberal elite had not been able to prevent from breaking out or from stopping.
“Today is a historic day, as we will present the group of three parties and their representatives, which aims to bring about a political change in Europe at the inaugural session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on July 16. It will be an era of freedom, sovereignty, peace, prosperity, and values,” said Herbert Kickl.
“We will not stand idly by and watch the emergence of a European superstate in which the parliaments of the member states degenerate into a kind of folklore, where sovereignty and the self-determination of individual states are empty phrases. We want a Europe that once again shows itself and develops with pride, values, traditions, and diversity,” said the FPÖ President. He added that “Europe does not want to be left to Macron, Von der Leyen or some left-wing experiment.”
At the press conference, Andrej Babiš stressed that EU environmental policy should take more account of economic development in order not to jeopardize the competitiveness of the Community. Technically sound, economically viable, and socially just solutions must be found.
