Sonnentempler
The party was initially formed in 1965 by Jean-François Thiriart as a political group to work alongside his Europe-wide movement "Jeune Europe". However the PCE did not gain much attention until the 1970s, when, with the aid of Luc Jouret (later founder of the Order of the Solar Temple) and Joseph di Mambro, Thiriart managed to engineer a split in the Communist Party of Belgium (PCB) gain a new core of membership for the CPE.