Viktor Orban came under a barrage of criticism in Strasbourg, sometimes bordering on insultsfor a whole morning. Yesterday’s debate on the objectives of the Hungarian presidency of the EU Council – postponed from September to the first plenary in October due to the floods that hit Hungary and Central Europe – was transformed, inevitably given the bad relations between the Chamber and the Hungarian government, in one sort of trial of the leader of Fidesz, a true ‘bete noire’ of what he calls the “elites” of the Brussels “bubble”. Those that made him “famous” despite himself, as he likes to say. At the end of his speech, while a standing ovation arose from the right of the hemicycle, some MEPs chanted “Bella Ciao”, being echoed by president Roberta Metsola, who reminded them: “We are not at Eurovision or at the Casa de Papel “.
Orban, the most senior head of state and government in the European Council, he expected it, so much so that on Tuesday he went to Strasbourg early to hold a press conferencebecause he knew the headlines would be ‘occupied’ by his critics. Among the sharpest attacks that the Hungarian prime minister has had to face are those from the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the one launched immediately afterwards by the group leader and president of the EPP Manfred Weber. Both are from the CDU/CSU, the first party according to the polls in Germany, even if today it is in opposition, and they militate in the EPP, a party of which Orban was part, in a not too distant time.
Von der Leyen’s attack. Verdi: “Putin’s servant”
Curiously, while on Tuesday the Hungarian prime minister spoke on several occasions about the conflict in Ukraine, which Hungary experiences closely (the two countries border and the Ukrainian Transcarpathia is home to a large Hungarian minority, a source of tension with Kiev), yesterday in his introductory speech he mentioned the war raging on the borders of his country almost in passing. But von der Leyenamong the most determined supporters of Kiev in Brussels with the Maltese Roberta Metsola, he faced it anyway, without pretenses dictated by etiquette between the various EU institutions. Orban will preside over the Council, which represents member states at ministerial level, until the end of the year.
In “no European language”, said the president, is “peace” synonymous with “surrender”. For the war in Ukraine, he added, “there is still someone who blames not the invader, but the invaded. I would like to ask him: did he ever blame the Hungarians for the Soviet invasion of 1956?” President then essentially accused Hungary of duplicity because, while preaching zero tolerance for illegal migration, it would have released convicted “traffickers” ahead of time, thus dumping the problem “in the neighbor’s garden”. the Chinese Police in Hungary means granting Beijing a “backdoor for foreign interference”. Not only that: for von der Leyen, the facilities granted by Hungary to the entry of Russian citizens put the security of the entire Schengen area at risk.
More explicit, from the left, Green co-president Terry Reintkealso German, who defined Orban, in no uncertain terms, as a “servant of Vladimir Putin”, telling him clearly that he is “not welcome” in the European Parliament. Von der Leyen left the Chamber shortly after her speech, leaving the replies to Vice President Maros Sefcovic, which attracted quite a bit of criticism from right-wing MEPs. It is not the first time that the president speaks in the Chamber and leaves: it is a habit that in the past has irritated deputies of different political persuasions.
Orban in the sights of the EPP
While attacks from the left were predictable, the harshest jabs came from the EPP. Weber, who at the time had long resisted calls from his party to oust Fidesz, was not at all tender with the former People’s Party turned Patriot. He noted that he is “very nervous” about the rise in the polls of the center-right Tysza party, a member of the EPP. He predicted to Orban that he will end up like Jaroslaw Kaczinsky’s Pis, ousted from the government in Warsaw by a coalition led by Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform. Orban “represents the past”, while Peter Magyar, president of Tysza and EPP MEP, “is the future” and “will beat” Fidesz in the next elections, he predicted.
Magyar himself, the first ‘simple’ MEP to speak in the Chamber after the group leaders, said that Hungary, due to Orban, has become “the most corrupt and poorest country in the EU”. Weber reminded the prime minister that, in a decade, “400 thousand Hungarians” have emigrated, fed up with the “corruption” prevailing in the country. He accused him of his visit to President Vladimir Putin at the beginning of July, a few hours after which the Russians “bombed a children’s hospital”. And he joked about the Patriots, the group created with the French Rassemblement National, the League and others, reminding them that the leader of the Dutch PVV, Geert Wilders, became “famous” south of the Alps for having publicly declared that “not even a cent of the ‘The EU must support Italy.” Who knows, he added, “if Matteo Salvini discussed it with him”.
The leader of the Liberals of Renew Europe, the French Valérie Hayer, said that “it is time to suspend Hungary’s right to vote in the EU Council”, while the socialist Iratxe Garcia Perez asked the Hungarian politician if he is aware of the “damages ” which causes in societies “sowing hatred towards those who are or feel different”. Also the co-president of the ECR Nicola Procaccini of Fratelli d’Italiaafter underlining the similarities with the Patriots on migration and the Green Deal, he pointed out to Orban, albeit “as a friend”, that he seems to ignore “the quartet of chaos”, made up of Russia, China, Iran and Korea North, an “external enemy” of Europe, against which the Conservatives are determined to fight, to defend the same “values” for which the “boys of Buda” died in 1956. As proof, if any were needed, that the fault line created in the European right by the war in Ukraine has not closed at all.
Orban’s reaction: “Intifada of politics”
For Orban, the one unleashed by the group leaders is just a “political intifada”, which does nothing but “repeat the lies of the left”. The prime minister also said he was “surprised” by the intervention of the president of the Commission, who was very critical of Hungary. “I wanted to talk about the presidency’s program, but I see that you are not interested,” he noted. For Orban von der Leyen, by attacking a Member State that holds the presidency on a similar occasion, transforms the Commission from a “guardian of the treaties” to a “political instrument”.
According to the prime minister, the Hungarian 1956 “has nothing to do” with the ongoing war in Ukraine. The fact is, he adds, that the EU will find itself “on the losing side”, due to the Commission’s “losing strategy”. “If we continue like this – he warned – we will lose. In all wars diplomacy is needed: if we neglect it, even more people will die,” he said, reiterating that “there is no solution on the battlefield”. Orban then listened to the speeches of the MEPs.
From “Putin’s useful idiot” to “dictator” and “corrupt”: the insults to Orban
Among the numerous critical references, Germany, a country that has close economic ties with Hungary, stood out for its vigor. German FDP liberal Moritz Heimo Koerner called Orban “Putin’s useful idiot” and accused him of turning Hungary into a “Banana Republic”.
The Green Daniel Freund, also German, called him “dictator” (the same name with which Jean-Claude Juncker jokingly greeted him) and accused him of being the “most corrupt” politician in Europe. Orban responded by saying that he is more “corrupt” because he would receive “money” from George Soros, the financier born in Budapest and a naturalized American, of Jewish origins, who has become the favorite target of the far right.
The clash with Salis
Among the many interventions, the Avs MEP Ilaria Salis (The Left group), who was detained in Hungary “for 15 months” in “very harsh” conditions, reiterated in the Chamber that the Danube country has become an “ethnic” state and “authoritarian” and that allowing Budapest to hold the EU presidency on a rotating basis is “highly inappropriate”. Salis also accused Orban of, among other things, targeting the “rule of law.”
The leader of Fidesz, an experienced politician unlike the Monza MP who comes from militancy in the far left and is in her first legislature, did not miss the point: “I find it absurd – he said – that here in the European Parliament, in the plenary , we must all listen together to a speech on the rule of law by the Honorable Ilaria Salis, who had beaten peaceful people” with iron bars, two far-right militants, “on the streets of Budapest. And here she is talking about the rule of law?” .