Police threaten to shut down conference of Europe’s far-right elites

But several hours in, just as Farage took the stage for his keynote, Belgian police arrived outside.

Emir Kir, the mayor of the district where the event was being held, said he had issued a shutdown order “to guarantee public safety.” He added: “The far-right is not welcome” in the city.

“I knew I wouldn’t be welcome back to Brussels,” Farage, the former Brexit Party leader, said to laughter from the audience.

The speeches continued — with former British home secretary Suella Braverman up next after Farage — while police blocked the entrance, letting people out but not in.

There were no counterprotesters outside the venue Tuesday morning, only media. Inside, tea and canapés were served without incident.

Orban, scheduled to speak Thursday, posted about the incident on X, writing that the Belgian police decided to shut down the event because “they couldn’t take free speech any longer.”

The conference, organized by the Edmund Burke Foundation, a right-wing think tank, had struggled to find a venue, with two options falling through before organizers landed on a space not far from the European Quarter.

As the event began Tuesday, attendees gathered in the cramped, humid event hall to listen to a panel featuring a Flemish nationalist and a far-right academic blast the European Union, “gender theory” and migration.

The forced venue change was a recurrent theme. Organizers and speakers framed it as evidence of a campaign of censorship against conservatives around the world.

Then an excited whisper went through the audience: The police were coming. Organizers and journalists rushed to the front of the building while various reporters and attendees went live with the news.

“It is an attempt to cancel free speech,” said John O’Brian, head of communications for MCC Brussels, an Orban-friendly think tank, “to cancel elected officials and other people from getting together for conversations.”