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PM Orbán and arch-rival Péter Magyar unite against Mercosur free trade deal
As long as there is a nationally-minded government in Hungary, the Mercosur agreement will never be approved, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in a video posted on Facebook on Tuesday. The opposition Tisza Party also protests against signing of Mercosur free trade agreement.
Everybody against Mercosur
In the video, the prime minister told farmers to hold on, adding that they had been deceived. Farmers are angry, he said, because not only had a decision been made against them, they had also been “taken for fools“.
Orbán noted that an international trade agreement had to be approved by national parliaments. “It is obvious that in Hungary, as long as there is nationally-minded government, the Mercosur agreement will never be approved,” he said.
He added that European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen outwitted national parliaments by creating an auxiliary rule, which says that the signed agreement can be applied provisionally in the meantime.
“That’s why farmers are angry, so it’s not just about the economic issues of Mercosur, not just about the future of agriculture, but also about the fact that farmers have been cheated, national parliaments are being bypassed, and decisions are being made that are detrimental to farmers,” Orbán said, adding that this is why they are now demonstrating in Strasbourg and demanding Ursula von der Leyen’s resignation. “They are right,” he said.
Tisza Party protests against signing of Mercosur free trade agreement
The Tisza Party protests against the signing of the Mercosur free trade agreement, the opposition party’s leader said at a press conference in Strasbourg on Tuesday, broadcast on the party’s social media page.
Magyar said that at the beginning of 2025, the Orban government “fully backed the Mercosur agreement,” then remained silent for six months, and has done nothing since negotiations on the agreement began in September, even though it had the opportunity to gather allies and try to form a “blocking minority” in the European Commission against the agreement, which he said was “harmful and dangerous for Hungary”.
He said the Tisza Party “strongly opposed” the agreement last February and called on the government to stand by Hungarian farmers, help them, and try to prevent the European Union from accepting the agreement in its current form.
He added that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen probably signed the agreement this week without the authorisation of the European Parliament, in violation of EU law.
On Wednesday, MEPs will vote on whether to sue the European Commission in the European Court of Justice for signing the agreement in violation of EU law. The political groups are divided on the issue, with a significant portion of the European People’s Party not supporting the motion, but Tisza, “going against the position of the People’s Party,” will support it, Magyar said.
“Everybody” may be against this deal but it’ll go ahead anyway, for the E.U. is a globalist-socialist-fascist tyranny. They are part of the cabal determined to deindustrialize the West and make us more impoverished.
Why? Because they are total psychopaths.
Define “globalist” if you want to keep using that label in a derogatory way because you constantly throw it around and we need to know exactly what it is that you are opposing.
Countries will never find their way to prosperity through trade protectionism. Free trade agreements always have opposition by vested interests and agriculture is often the coddled “sacred cow” of countries which may be subsidized with many inefficient producers propped up with trade barriers. Over the course of history the removal of trade barriers has unequivocally resulted in greater prosperity for all as the efficient produce more more and the inefficient are weeded out and the resources that were wasted on propping those industries up are freed up for use in better industries. Thinking about Mercosur I would focus on the jobs that may be gained for example in exports by the auto industry and other manufacturing rather than focus on greater competition in agriculture which always has been an industry that employs a much smaller proportion of the labour market. Farming has become so mechanized over decades it employs a tiny percentage of the people it did previously.
Hungary industry output as percentage of GDP – Manufacturing 16%, Agriculture less than 3%. The people that contribute less than 3% of Hungary’s economy want to dictate trade to the other 97%