It turns out that Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s hard right chancellor, was an agent of George Soros all along. He must have also been an adept confidence trickster to so successfully mislead his Hungarian fans up until now. Supporters of the Orbán regime are being fed a new narrative Tuesday morning, after the Austrian leader indicated that he supports enacting Article 7 against Hungary and confirmed that Austrian MEPs will vote in favour of Judith Sargentini’s blistering report on the demise of democracy at the hands of Viktor Orbán. The Magyar Idők daily, the main propaganda organ of the ruling party, asks in a headline article: “Is Soros playing his last trump card with Kurz?” Magyar Idők has “unearthed” a piece of information that is alarming party stalwarts in Hungary: Mr. Kurz is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, an organization co-founded by the Open Society Foundation of George Soros.
Mr. Kurz added that if Article 7 proceedings begin against Hungary, Fidesz must be removed from the conservative European People’s Party, the largest faction in the European Parliament. Although it is difficult to predict how the vote on accepting the Sargentini Report and its call to begin Article 7 proceedings against Hungary will go, Mr. Orbán is losing his allies. In addition to Austrian MEPs, Polish members of the European People’s Party intend to support the Sargetini Report too. Polish politicians feel that it would be unfair that Poland is undergoing these same proceedings (launched by the European Commission in late 2017) for rule of law violations, while Hungary avoids this fate.
Meanwhile in Strasbourg, Manfred Weber, Leader of the European People’s Party, expressed dismay that Central European University is being targeted by the Hungarian government, and can no longer issue degrees, whilst academic freedom is supposed to be a fundamental value of the European Union. There had been some reports early Tuesday morning that Mr. Weber and Mr. Orbán had agreed that the Hungarian prime minister would strike a conciliatory tone in the European Parliament, during his allotted seven minutes, in an effort to defuse tensions within the EPP. There seemed little evidence of this in Mr. Orbán’s address.
“You want to label a country and a people. You are assuming a grave responsibility when for the first time in the history of the EU, you want to lock out a people from the decisions of the EU. There are and there will be disagreements. We think differently about the role of national cultures, we see the role of the family in a different way and we have polar opposite views on migration. But these differences are not a reason to shut out a country from decision-making. We would never take it upon ourselves to discriminate against those who do not agree with us,” declared Mr. Orbán. The Hungarian prime minister uttered that last sentence with a straight face. He then accused the European Parliament of extortion.
Viktor Orbán addressing the European Parliament on Tuesday.
The Sargentini Report is specifically about the fact that the Orbán regime has systematically removed anyone who dared not to agree with the ruling party from any positions of significance and from public institutions and, to the best of their ability, from the media landscape as well.
One of the MEPs to respond was Joseph Weidenholzer of Austria. He noted that the EP is not turning on a member state, but rather defending the European Union’s shared values. He then added: there is no such thing as an illiberal democracy. Eastern Europe has already lived through this once, but back then they called it “people’s democracy.”
Nigel Farage of UKIP had a different message for Mr. Orbán: “It is not your country that they have insulted, but you. Please, join the Brexit club. You will feel great.”
The European Parliament votes on the Sargentini Report on Wednesday. Should the vote pass, it is widely expected that Fidesz will either be expelled from the European People’s Party or will leave on its own. The Hungarian government party may then join forces with European fascists and extreme right politicians, which is where Fidesz properly belongs.
