BRUSSELS — Police in Brussels moved on Tuesday to shut down an ongoing gathering of Europe’s hard-right elite.
The National Conservatism Conference was set to welcome Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and U.K. politician Nigel Farage over the next two days, but law enforcement arrived two hours into the event at the Claridge venue, near the European Quarter, to inform organizers that the event would be terminated.
“The authorities decided to shut the event due to possibility of public disorder,” a police officer heard by POLITICO told one of the organizers. The shutters had already come down on the venue where Brexit architect Farage was due to give a keynote speech at 11 a.m.
“It’s really something out of a tinpot dictatorship,” Frank Füredi, one of the organizers from right-wing think tank MCC, which is co-sponsoring the event, told POLITICO. “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 Claridge event space was already the conference’s third venue, after its first space — Concert Noble — turned them away under pressure from the Socialist Mayor of Brussels Philippe Close, and the liberal mayor of Etterbeek put pressure on the luxury Sofitel hotel to cancel it at the second attempt.
Emir Kir, the mayor of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode where the Claridge is situated, earlier told POLITICO by email that he would “immediately take measures to ban” the event.
The police told organizers there was a risk of protesters causing civil disorder at the venue later in the afternoon. Anthony Gilland, chief of staff at MCC, told the police that they would challenge the mayor’s decision in court to keep the show on the road.
Other scheduled attendees at the event included right-wing darlings Suella Braverman, the former U.K. home secretary, and Eric Zemmour, a far-right firebrand who ran to be president of France in 2022.
The NatCon conference is organized by the Edmund Burke Foundation, a right-wing think tank.