Foreign minister blasts EPP group leader for ‘prioritising Fidesz’s removal’ over pandemic response

Manfred Weber, the group leader of the conservative European People’s Party, “should be ashamed” for “organising the removal” of Fidesz from the European Parliamentary group instead of focusing on managing the coronavirus pandemic, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Thursday.

MEPs of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party on Wednesday announced that they would leave the EPP group with immediate effect after the group approved an amendment to its statues.

Szijjártó said on Facebook that it was time to ask “just how many hours” Weber had spent procuring vaccines “or anything else needed to protect the lives, health and jobs of the European people”.

“Thousands of people are dying in Europe on a daily basis and tens of thousands are getting infected because of the coronavirus pandemic,” Szijjártó said.

“The European people need vaccines and ventilators because these are what save lives.”

Yet, he added, Weber had been busy “organising the removal of the most successful member party of the EPP and thinking up bureaucratic tricks needed to achieve this”.

“Manfred Weber should be ashamed of himself,” Szijjártó said. “It is a good thing that we are no longer part of a parliamentary group led by someone like him.”

The EPP group voted on Wednesday to change the group’s statutes to make it possible to suspend the membership of a whole group, not just individual MEP members, or to terminate membership collectively if the party group’s rules were seriously breached.

Read alsoFidesz wants Hungary to leave the European Union? – UPDATED

Source: MTI