Italian Social Movement - International Affiliation

International Affiliation

From the end of the war to the late 1980s, the MSI was the chief reference point for the European far-right. By the initiative of the MSI, the European Social Movement was established after conferences in Rome in 1950 and Malmö, Sweden, in 1951. The conference in Malmö was attended by around one hundred delegates from French, British, German, Austrian, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, and Swedish neo-fascist groups, with some notable figures including Maurice Bardèche, Karl-Heinz Priester, Oswald Mosley, and Per Engdahl. The MSI was also part of the New European Order, together with, among others, the Falange and the Socialist Reich Party. Due to the MSI's support for continued Italian control of South Tyrol, German-speaking delegates eventually left the NEO. Growing divisions and external competition left both groups largely moribund by 1957. At a conference in Venice in 1962, the National Party of Europe was formed by the MSI, the Union Movement, the Deutsche Reichspartei, Jeune Europe, and the Mouvement d'Action Civique. The group was effectively defunct by 1966.

In response to the development of "eurocommunism" in the mid-1970s, Almirante initiated the first conference of a "Euro-Right" in Rome in 1978. The meeting included the francoist New Force, France's Party of New Forces (PFN), and parties from Belgium, Portugal, and Greece. The parties were unable to gather enough support to establish a group in the European Parliament following the 1979 European election. After the 1984 European election, the MSI was finally able to establish a European Right group, together with the French National Front (which had emerged victorious from its rivalry with the PFN) and the Greek National Political Union. However, following the 1989 European election, the MSI refused to join the new European Right group over the territorial dispute of South Tyrol, due to the arrival of The Republicans, a German party which supported South Tyrol claims made by the Freedom Party of South Tyrol. Neither The Republicans, nor the Belgian Vlaams Blok party, wanted to form a group with the MSI over this issue. As the MSI transformed itself into AN, it distanced itself from increasingly powerful European far-right parties such as France's National Front and the Freedom Party of Austria.