ROME, May 9 (UPI) -- A new European left combining 16 national communist and leftist parties was formed in Rome Sunday -- in time to campaign in the EU parliamentary elections.
Grouping parties from Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Spain, the new European Left was formed to strengthen the left in the European parliament, and in the the new, enlarged EU.
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At the party's founding congress, Italian Communist leader Fausto Bertinotti was elected its first president.
He told hundreds of delegates that the new party should sever its ties with Stalinism, and so "liberate the idea of Communism from oppression and look towards the future."