BRUSSELS (EJP)--- A European Parliament committee is to investigate the legality of the assembly’s new extreme-right  group which was formally established during the plenary session in Strasbourg, France.

The new group, which is called “Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty” (ITS), took to the legislature’s floor for the first time on Tuesday and caused chaos within the parliament.

Numerous MEPs led by German socialist group leader Martin Schulz called for a “cordon sanitaire” or boycott of the new group and question their legitimacy.

The new faction, he said, “infringed parliament’s rules because its members did not share a common political platform.”

Others declared that while they did not agree with the group of eurosceptic and anti-immigration deputies, they were democratically entitled to form a group.

But Schulz has asked the parliament’s constitutional affairs committee to investigate on the grounds that it is a "technical" rather than a "political" grouping which would be in breach of the parliament’s rules.

“This will be the first thing the committee will discuss next week," a parliament official said.

This argument was upheld in 2001 by the European Court of Justice when a like-minded group was formed.

Common platform  

The court ruled that the Technical Group of Independents did not have a common political platform.

After reports that he had been described as a "totalitarian" by the leader of the new extreme-right group, French MEP and deputy leader of National Front Bruno Gollnisch, Schulz said: "To be attacked by a man who is a Holocaust denier and who represents the neo-fascist movement is an honour for me. From the earliest possible moment he shows how he is prepared to behave when he becomes a leader of a parliamentary group."

Funds

As a formal group, the MEPs are entitled to up to 1 million euros in central funding.

"I will do whatever I can to stop this sort of group getting any power," Schulz told a news conference.

Hungarian Liberal MEP Viktoria Mohacsi on Wednsday called on the European Parliament to "find a way of preventing racist propaganda from being popularized with funds coming from our pockets".

The new extreme-right group includes also Bulgarian MEP Dimitar Stoyanov, who last Monday attacked the "Jewish establishment", Jean-Marie Le Pen, veteran member of the French National Front, who shocked Europe by reaching the second stage of the 2002 French presidential elections, Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Benito Mussolini, Frank Vanhecke, leader of Belgium’s separatist Flemish nationalist party, Vlaams Belang, Andreas Mölzer, a former aide to the Austrian far-right leader, Jörg Haider, and British Ashley Mote.

Graham Watson, leader of the Liberal group, didn't share Schulz’s views. “If you have rules, you have rules”. He believes that it would be better “to defeat the extreme-right through the democratic system.”

For the Greens, Daniel Cohn-Bendit rejected the idea of a “cordon sanitaire” but said he was confident that “a majority of MEPs would refuse to vote for someone who denies the Holocaust”.

Bruno Gollnisch is waiting for a court verdict in France on charges of questioning the Nazi death camp gas chambers. He was charged with "disputing crimes against humanity" over comments he made more than two years ago about the Holocaust.

The centre-right European People’s Party, the largest group in the parliament, said it would first consult its 27 national political components.

The Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty group plans to campaign against the EU constitution, immigration and Turkish membership of the EU is entitled to at least two vice-presidents on the assembly’s various committees due to be voted upon next week.

Groups in the parliament, representing different political interests, control the EU legislature’s agenda, voting pacts, speaking time and seats on powerful parliamentary committees, where much of the work is done.

Under parliament’s rules a formal grouping requires 20 MEPs from at least six countries. That requirement was reached only after Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU this month.