The European Parliament has blocked an exhibition on South Africa organised by Patriots for Europe, the assembly’s third-largest group, nine days before it was due to open.
The display was to be staged on Parliament premises. It had been intended to examine South Africa’s political, social and economic situation, the policies of the African National Congress (ANC) and European political and financial support for the South African Government.
According to the group, the decision was taken by the college of quaestors, the MEPs responsible for administrative and financial matters affecting members.
The reason given was the possible effect of the exhibition on South Africa’s municipal elections, which are due on November 4, the group said.
Patriots for Europe has also claimed the ban came after pressure from South Africa’s parliamentary representation in Brussels and from its embassy. The group has not published documents supporting that account.
Tom Vandendriessche, a Vlaams Belang MEP from Belgium, said the decision showed how parties of the Left and the centre behave when they are confronted with opposition. With their polling figures falling, he argued, they were protecting themselves by removing criticism of their own policies.
He called the electoral interference argument ridiculous, given that the vote in question is to be held thousands of kilometres away, and accused the mainstream groups of applying a double standard.
The group has tied the episode to the cordon sanitaire that has kept it out of the Parliament’s senior positions since the 2024 European elections, despite its size in the chamber.
The Patriots hold no vice-presidencies, no quaestor seats and no committee chairs. In October 2024 the group said it would ask the Court of Justice of the European Union to annul the exclusion, arguing that it breached the EU treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
In its statement on the exhibition, the group said a democratic institution could not tolerate political censorship.
South Africa is due to elect councillors in all its metropolitan, local and district municipalities on November 4, in the first such vote since 2021. The ANC took 45.6 per cent of the vote at those elections, its weakest nationwide result up to that point.
Relations between Brussels and Pretoria have grown closer since the eighth EU-South Africa summit in Cape Town in March 2025. There the European Commission announced a Global Gateway investment package worth €4.7 billion, later expanded to almost €12 billion, and both sides opened talks on a clean trade and investment partnership.
