Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s Party (EPP) parliamentary faction has issued three demands of Fidesz if it is to be permitted to remain a member of the largest caucus in the European Parliament. Hungary’s ruling party, after launching yet another anti-Soros, anti-Brussels and now also anti-Jean Claude Juncker campaign, must: stop this campaign, apologize to the member parties of the EPP and guarantee that Central European University can stay in Hungary.
Based on how Fidesz party communications director Balázs Hidvéghi responded to the demands, it appears unlikely that Hungary’s ruling party is ready to give its assent. Resorting to the regime’s mantra, repeated ad nauseum, Mr. Hidvéghi asserted that “defending Christianity” and stopping migration was more important than EPP party discipline. Then speaking of CEU, he declared: “The Soros network will leave no stone unturned when it comes to representing its own interests.”
Mr. Weber, however, remarked that “it is Orbán who has left the People’s Party, and not the other way around.” He added that Christian Democrats represent a reasonable balance on the issue of migration, rejecting the “open doors” policy of the left, as well as the far right, which wants to strip migrants and refugees of their human dignity. In contrast, according to Mr. Weber, Christian democracy represents both security as well as treating people in a humane manner.
It’s quite clear, however, that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán would sooner be expelled from the EPP than strike a more conciliatory tone. He has, for instance, called his critics within the EPP “useful idiots.” In an interview with Germany’s Die Welt, Mr. Orbán said:
“The problem of the EPP is that it has become too big. The EVP members from the Nordic countries are much closer to Macron than to the Germans. We Hungarians feel we are something like the CSU of the EPP.”
Viktor Orbán (25 February 2019). Photo: Viktor Orbán’s Facebook page.
Then speaking of his relationship with Mr. Juncker, Prime Minister Orbán said that there is a disconnect between how the President of the European Commission is perceived in western Europe and how he is seen in Central or East/Central Europe. In the east, his image is largely negative.
Mr. Orbán explained:
“Juncker is a kind man. So kind that one forgives him even the silliest gestures. Although I am a streetfighter, there is no personal antipathy between us. I don’t like his views, especially his proximity to socialist economic policies and his support for migration. I do perceive his attempt to have us thrown out of the EPP as a personal disloyalty. No-one can expect from us to not react to disloyalty, even if it is the disloyalty of such a kind man.”
In this same interview with Die Welt, Mr. Orbán rejected the charge that his anti-Soros campaign was antisemitic, noting: “It’s not my doing that the Hungarian citizen Soros is of Jewish origin! That lies with God. But it happens to be that in Hungary Soros incarnates the ugly face of globalism.” The Hungarian prime minister then added, after the German journalist mentioned that the anti-Soros propaganda billboards remind him of antisemitic campaigns of the twentieth century: “You say that because you are German. Every nation carries its history around with it like a rucksack, but what’s in the rucksack differs from nation to nation. These pictures don’t remind anyone of antisemitism in Hungary. And we don’t view our Jewish compatriots primarily as Jews but as Hungarians.”
It would appear as though Mr. Orbán has two realistic options: begin negotiations to leave the EPP and join far-right parties in a euroskeptical faction within the European Parliament or to exert pressure within the EPP and gradually change the face and character of this faction, drawing it closer to the radical right. From the perspective of Hungarian domestic public opinion, neither option would be damaging to Fidesz nor to Mr. Orbán personally.
