Opposition parties slam Orban’s Szeklerland speech

Hungary’s opposition parties on Saturday slammed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s keynote speech at the Tusványos Summer University, saying it was a “declaration of war on Europe”.

At the 29th Bálványos Summer University, in central Romania, a long-standing cultural event for ethnic Hungarians, the prime minister said that every European country had the right to protect its Christian culture and the traditional family model, as well as the right to reject immigration, read more HERE.

Jobbik

Conservative Jobbik‘s spokesman told MTI that Orban’s speech showed that he prioritised his own European political ambitions over Hungary’s fortunes. Orbán “has indicated more than once” that he sees himself as a potential leader of Europe, party spokesman Ádám Mirkóczki said. Orbán, he added, was cynical to declare that western countries are not democratic.

It is Orbán who has dismantled freedom of speech and the press, as well as abolishing public institutions which are the bedrock of democracy, he insisted.

Several “allegedly independent institutions” are “stuffed with party soldiers”, he said.

Socialists

Socialist leader Bertalan Tóth said that the Christian democracy outlined by Orbán in Baile Tusnad was “far removed from Hungarian reality”. In a video uploaded to the party’s Facebook page, he said that tens of thousands of families faced eviction, health care was in a state of “devastation” and the situation of FX loan-holders was still unresolved. Furthermore,

Hungary’s public media “spouts propaganda” and entrepreneurs connected to Orbán are “fed public funds from the EU and Hungary”, Tóth said.

Orbán’s Fidesz party is not independent from the European elite but rather belongs to a party family provides the majority of officials to the European Commission and the European Parliament, he said. The Carpathian Basin cannot be rebuilt without the EU, Tóth said. Without the EU, “we cannot speak of central European development, an economic region or the cooperation of free states,” he said. Tóth called for a cooperative, socially engaged Europe that protects its borders and finds common solutions to challenges.