Strange bedfellows indeed for Fianna Fail's Strasbourg Six

The affiliation to Fianna Fail's European Parliament group today of 10 members of the Italian Alleanza Nazionale (AN) party brings their ranks to a respectable 31.

The group now consists of six Fianna Fail MEPs, 12 members of the French Eurosceptical right under Charles Pasqua, one Danish anti-immigrant, two Portuguese conservatives, and the 10 members of the formerly neo-fascist AN. Approaches from Austrian Jorg Haider's Freedom Party have been firmly rejected, however.

But they are strange bedfellows, indeed.

More than one observer of the Parliament this week in Strasbourg wondered to this correspondent why the party of government of a small country which had benefited so substantially from EU membership would want to associate with such a strongly Eurosceptical group of members.

I asked the president of the new group, Mr Pasqua, would he accept a description of the new group, Union for Europe of the Nations (UFEN) as "Eurosceptical". "Yes, most definitely, Eurosceptical."

Not so, says Gerry Collins, the leader of the Fianna Fail group. Mr Pasqua is speaking for himself not us in that respect, he insists. He describes Fianna Fail as "committed to the development of Europe, but reserving the right to be critical". Anyway, nearly 40 per cent of the Irish people voted against Amsterdam, he argues, yet they "do not reject Europe".

Their alliance is a loose grouping, he says, bound by a broad political declaration. These are people they have been able to work with effectively in the past. Each national group is still free to vote as it sees fit, he says, recalling the Fianna Fail decision to back a motion in the last parliament critical of the French nuclear tests in the Pacific, to the embarrassment of its RPR colleagues.

"Where we can find common ground we will work with them, otherwise we will network elsewhere," he says.

Yet the political complexion of the group is strikingly different from that in the last Parliament. Having lost the moderate Eurosceptics, the Chiracian RPR, to the mainstream Christian Democratic European People's Party, Fianna Fail instead recruited Pasqua's hardliners.

Mr Pasqua has been the key figure of the French right-wing souverainiste opposition to European integration. He opposed the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties and French participation in the euro. He has denounced Jacques Chirac as a traitor to the right and was a hugely controversial interior minister, enacting strong immigration controls.

He insists he is not anti-European but a passionate defender of the prerogative of the nation state over central state functions and the word "federalist" is high on his list of grievous insults. And the agenda of his Rassemblement pour la France et l'Independance de l'Europe (RFIE) is very much about rolling European integration back, particularly on the issue of common border controls.

Another new member of the group has also displayed hardright credentials. Mogens Camre, a former Danish Social Democrat MP, caused huge controversy when he defected to the far-right anti-immigrant Dansk Folkeparti (DPP).

Its leader, the charismatic and demagogic populist Ms Pia Kjaersgaard, campaigned against both Maastricht and Amsterdam, arguing that they threatened to flood Denmark with bogus asylum-seekers. It also opposes Danish participation in the single currency.

Although the party insists it is not racist, and has made a point of distancing itself from parties like the French National Front, many observers of the Danish scene see it as providing a sophisticated cover for xenophobia.

By contrast the link-up with the Italian party, AN, appears far less embarrassing for Fianna Fail.

Working hard to put their neofascist past behind them, the party which is led by Gianfranco Fini, and which enjoys some 13 to 14 per cent support in Italy, is certainly seen at home as establishing democratic credentials. It has actually become considerably more Europhile than its new partners - indeed that was part of the reason for initial opposition from Pasqua's group to its membership of UFEN.

Mr Collins defends their membership by referring to the situation in Northern Ireland and the need to bring previously antidemocratic forces into the fold of democracy.

In fact, had the deal been done two days before, their votes could have facilitated Mr Collins's possible nomination as vice-president of the European Parliament.

He says their views should not pose a problem for the group and defends the principle of the alliance of such ostensibly different parties by pointing to the Tories' and Dana Rosemary Scallon's presence inside the federalist European People's Party group. The Parliament's structures make for strange alliances, he argues.

Yet it is not just a technical question of little political import. As Ireland moves from its status of net recipient to net contributor to the EU budget, is Fianna Fail not sending out a strong signal to our European partners? By their friends shall ye know them.