Immediately after his election as leader, he restated his pledge to withdraw the party's MEPs from cooperation with the European People's Party (EPP) within the European Parliament. The British Conservative Party were part of the anti-federalist European Democrats, a sub-group of the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament, but Cameron planned for the ED to break away in order to form a new, independent grouping. Cameron aimed to set up a group more focused on the Conservative Party's views, a move that has been resisted by some Conservative MEPs and all mainstream Conservative member-parties of the EPP. After much speculation, he announced in July 2006 that Conservative MEPs would withdraw from the EPP in 2009. The stated reason for the delay was that the Conservatives' proposed future alliance partners, the Czech Civic Democratic Party, needed time to form a new domestic coalition in order to form a "eurorealist" grouping in the European Parliament. At the EU level, the Conservatives are currently associated with the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which "contains parties that follow a broadly Eurosceptic line" and "focuses on promoting inter-governmentalism over supra-nationalism, and pushing for development of free market policies".