EU Politics: Europe Far Right and Populists hails Trump, slams EU, Islam, migrants - Philip Heijmans

ar right leaders promised to build a new Europe without the EU, as they rallied against Islam and praised US President Donald Trump's hardline immigration policy at a meeting in Prague over the weekend.

Populist politicians from France, the UK, Poland, Austria and the Netherlands wrapped up their gathering on Sunday, held under the banner: "For a Europe of sovereign nations".

The conference was hosted by the Czech Republic's anti-Islam Freedom and Direct Democracy party, which won nearly 11 percent of the vote in October and is chaired by Tomio Okamura, a Czech-Japanese politician.

The meeting closed a year of far-right gains across Europe, as demonstrated most recently in Austria.

Members of the Freedom Party of Austria, who were present at the Prague conference, were lauded for having just entered the country's new coalition government.

The National Front's Marine Le Pen, who lost out on the French presidency earlier this year after reaching the final round of voting, said the development was "excellent news for Europe.

"These successes show that the nation states are the future, that the Europe of tomorrow is a Europe of the people," she said.

Along with Dutch Geert Wilders, who leads the Party for Freedom, Le Pen upped a call to unify opposition to the EU under the Europe of Nations and Freedom coalition (ENF) - the smallest group, launched in 2015, in the European Parliament.

Closing Europe's borders to asylum-seekers is one of the group's key ambitions.

Read More: Europe far right hails Trump, slams EU, Islam, migrants | Czech Republic News | Al Jazeera

France -Banking Industry: French banks refuse to loan far-right party

French banks are refusing to lend the far-right National Front party money for political reasons, according to a senior party official. This means leader Marine Le Pen may lack the resources needed to fund a presidential campaign in 2017.

As reported online by France 24, National Front party Secretary General Nicolas Bay said he had asked for a loan of about €27m for the April-May presidential and legislative campaigns next year “from among banking establishments in France, Europe and around the world”.

In an interview with Europe 1 radio, Bay said French banks were refusing to lend the party money, he said, adding that the party was facing “discrimination based on political opinions”.

Société Générale, Crédit Agricole, BPCE and Crédit Mutuel did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the Agence France-Presse (AFP), while BNP Paribas and the French banking federation declined to offer a statement.

In a separate report, the Reuters news agency noted that Le Pen has the support of around a quarter of French voters according to opinion polls, but campaign funding has long been an issue.

In 2014, it emerged that the party had received a €9m loan from a Russian lender.

Read  more: French banks refuse to loan far-right party

European Elections: UK sceptics surge, Dutch right-wing stumbles as EU votes

Difficult vote in Britain:  Choosing between two evils

Britain's Eurosceptic UK Independence Party made strong gains but their Dutch counterparts stumbled in elections to the European Parliament that are expected to produce a widespread anti-EU vote thanks in part to a low turnout.

Nigel Farage's UKIP, which wants to pull Britain out of the European Union and severely restrict immigration, grabbed seats from both the governing Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party in local elections held at the same time as the EU vote on Thursday, partial results showed.

If those scores are confirmed or amplified in the European ballot, from which results will only be released late on Sunday, it could increase pressure on Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to take a harder line on reducing the EU's powers.

"Looking at the average vote shares across the country, and without wishing to count any chickens before they're hatched, it looks pretty good," an ebullient Farage said as evidence of his anti-establishment party's surge trickled in.

Bad night for Geert Wilders

By contrast, far right Dutch populist Geert Wilders, whose anti-EU, anti-Islam Freedom Party had been forecast to top the poll in the Netherlands, was beaten into fourth place by pro-European parties in a surprise reverse, according to exit polls.

His PVV was projected to get just 12.2 percent, behind the centrist Democrats 66, the centre-right Christian Democrats and Prime Minister Mark Rutte's right-wing liberals.

Wilders blamed the disappointing score on a low turnout of around 35 percent, saying that "by staying home (voters) showed their loathing for and disinterest in the European Union. The Netherlands has not become more pro-European."

Political analysts said the poor showing by the PVV may not be mirrored by UKIP or the National Front in France, but said it could still alter interpretations of the elections as a whole.

"The results will have a large effect on the media and political frame of the European elections, which was supposed to be 'far-right wins big' and will now look more critically at the actual results," said Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia in the United States.

Voters in Ireland and the Czech Republic began casting their ballots on Friday but most of the EU's 28 nations hold the election on Sunday. Some 388 million Europeans are eligible to vote for 751 members of the parliament, which is an equal co-legislator with member governments on most EU laws.

Read more: UK sceptics surge, Dutch right-wing stumbles as EU votes | Reuters