Franz Obermayr, from Austria, was the president of the organisation starting in November 2012, succeeding founding chairman Godfrey Bloom from the United Kingdom.
[6][15][16][17] In the election, the French FN performed very strongly, winning 24 seats, while the Slovak National Party failed to win a seat and the Sweden Democrats abstained from the alliance (instead joining Europe of Freedom and Democracy), leaving the FN, PVV, LN, FPÖ and VB as the only EAF member parties.
On 28 May, three days after the end of the elections, Le Pen, Wilders, Matteo Salvini (LN), Harald Vilimsky (FPÖ) and Gerolf Annemans (VB) appeared at a press conference in Brussels, claiming to be confident to find enough allies for forming a new group soon.
[18][19] News media reported about a competition between the proposed EAF group led by Le Pen and the existing Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group led by Nigel Farage of UKIP, both trying to win over support from newly represented Eurosceptic, right-wing and populist parties from different countries.
While the FN and Wilders preferred to form one large group, including UKIP, the British Eurosceptics decidedly rejected the idea, branding Le Pen's party as too extreme.