(ANSA-AFP) - NATIONAL HARBOUR, FEB 22 - Blue baseball caps
and T-shirts sporting a continental version of Donald Trump's
political rallying cry -- "Make Europe Great Again" -- abound at
a gigantic conference center near the US capital Washington this
week. Leaders across the European right have arrived at the
annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in
droves, seeking ideas and insights from those at the heart of
the movement that has reshaped the United States. "This idea of
America First, it also refers to what we would like, that is to
say a little Europe First," Raphael Audouard, director of the
Fondation des Patriotes pour l'Europe (Patriots for Europe
Foundation), told AFP. "The return to national borders, which is
what Trump is defending, echoes what we're defending in
different European countries," said the 32-year-old Frenchman,
whose group is affiliated with the group of the same name in the
European Parliament. CPAC is an annual gathering of conservative
leaders and activists that this year is celebrating Trump's
return to the White House, with members of his administration
and political allies featuring heavily among the speakers. Many
of the American attendees are "happy" to see that Trump's brand
of bombastic populism is also inspiring European leaders,
Audouard said. But even amid the meeting of minds, he sounded a
note of warning. "We're aware that we shouldn't be naive," he
said. "Trump wants America first. But America first is not
Europe first." - 'Trump revolution' - Party leaders such as
Britain's Nigel Farage, and prime ministers such as Slovakia's
Robert Fico were among those making the pilgrimage. Not all were
singing from the same choir book. France's Jordan Bardella, a
member of the European Parliament and head of his country's
anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party, announced he was
canceling a speech to CPAC scheduled for Friday after Trump ally
Steve Bannon made an apparent Nazi salute onstage a day earlier.
Others said they had come merely in the spirit of inquiry.
Romanian Diana Iovanici-Sosoaca, also a member of the European
Parliament, explained that she was there out of "a curiosity
what is happening here." "There were times when Europe was
great. Now it's low, it's down," said the lawmaker, who first
made a name for herself on social networks in Romania for her
opposition to anti-Covid measures. That sense of a Europe in
decline was a recurring theme among its attendees. "Patriotic
Brits... look across the Atlantic with envy," former British
prime minister Liz Truss said in one CPAC speech. "We want a
Trump revolution in Britain," she said. "We want to be part of
the second American revolution." Trump's cost cutter-in-chief
Elon Musk, who took the stage Thursday swinging a chainsaw
presented to him by Argentina's President Javier Milei, called
Europe a "collapsing society." "It feels that way. It feels like
France was nicer 50 years ago than it is today," claimed the
world's richest person, who has made himself the US president's
most powerful ally. Former Polish prime minister Mateusz
Morawiecki told AFP the continent has focused on "stupid
priorities... on the wrong priorities, like accommodating as
many illegal migrants as possible." The US and Europe are
experiencing "a difficult and very dangerous moment when both
parts of the transatlantic community, so to say, are getting
more and more away from each other. And I'm very much concerned
about this," he said. "I try to explain, translate the European
language to the American language and vice versa. That's my
major objective here." (ANSA-AFP).
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
