'Europe will wake up in 2017', Le Pen says in Germany

French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen on Saturday told a European gathering of rightwing populists in Germany that a string of high-stakes elections in 2017 would blow a wind of change across the region. Emboldened by the Brexit vote and Donald Trump's US presidential victory, the far-right National Front leader said voters in France, Germany and the Netherlands would be next to reject the status quo.
"2016 was the year the Anglo-Saxon world woke up. 2017, I am sure, the people of continental Europe will wake up," she told a cheering crowd at a conference hall in the western city of Koblenz, on the river Rhine. "It's no longer a question of if, but when," she added in a speech that railed against migration, the euro and open borders.
Billed as a "European counter-summit", the Koblenz gathering is also being attended by Frauke Petry of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), Geert Wilders of the Dutch anti-Islam Freedom Party, Harald Vilimsky, secretary general of the Freedom Party of Austria and Matteo Salvini of Italy's anti-EU Northern League.
It comes just a day after the inauguration of Trump, who assumed power with a staunchly nationalist address in which he vowed to put "America first". The Koblenz participants have repeatedly voiced their admiration for the maverick billionaire, and like him are hoping to shake up the political landscape by capitalising on a tide of anger against the establishment and anxiety over migration.
"Yesterday a new America, today Koblenz and tomorrow a new Europe," Wilders, sporting his trademark peroxide hairdo, told the 800-strong crowd in German. "We are the start of a patriotic spring in Europe," he said to loud applause. The charismatic Dutch MP, who has vowed to ban the Koran and pull his country of the European Union, currently tops polls ahead of March parliamentary elections. But observers say he will likely struggle to find the coalition partners needed to govern.