Italy: 5Star Movement asks to join Left group in European Parliament

Brussels: Italy’s 5Star Movement has asked to join The Left group in the European Parliament, one official from the party and one from the group told POLITICO.

5Stars, the left-populist party of former Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, has been without a political home in the European Parliament for several years following a period in which it sat with the Euroskeptic UKIP party of Brexit architect Nigel Farage. The Italian party also tried and failed to join the Parliament’s liberal ALDE group in 2017.

5Stars won eight seats in the June European election, down from 14 it took in 2019.

The Left group will consider 5Stars’ request at a meeting Wednesday morning in the Parliament.

The inclusion of 5Stars would take The Left group to 50 members in European Parliament — still one of the smallest political families there.

The move would quash rumors that 5Stars was set to form a new leftist grouping together with the party of German Left Bundestag member and former EU lawmaker Sahra Wagenknecht along with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer.

Smer has said publicly that it wishes to return to the Socialists grouping from which it was excluded last year after forming a coalition with a nationalist party. However, the Socialists deny this as a possibility.