Jobbik

Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: At the border of civilizations – Ten years of Turkey

turkey

Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi:

It is perhaps safe to say that Turkey is one of the world’s most exciting countries for any politician involved in foreign affairs. What is Turkey today? Located at the border of religions and the intersection of geopolitical interests, Turkey has been trying to carry out a daring social and cultural change for nearly a century. Where does all this lead to? Well, the question has never been more pressing than now.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has just managed to become the focus of international attention again – not that it’s so unusual for him. However, expelling the ambassadors of 10 major Western countries is a particularly harsh move even if Erdoğan eventually changed his mind and dropped the idea on the condition that the diplomats would refrain from “interfering with Turkey’s domestic affairs”.

But how could the Turkish situation escalate to this point? Back in the mid and late 2000s when I became active in politics, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) had just taken the power a couple of years before. Turkey had gone through difficult decades with constant tensions between the army, their favoured pro-West elite and the rural religious groups. This period of Turkey’s history was marked by military coups and civil unrest. 

This was the background that saw the rise of the AKP, which promised democratization, economic liberalism and western norms while also supporting the religious feelings of the conservative societal groups.

Although the AKP was often accused of having a hidden agenda and heavily criticized for its Muslim religious convictions, I followed Turkey’s political events with great interest and optimism at the time. I was curious whether Turkey manages to synthesize the pro-West and Muslim ideas that were equally characteristic of the country. The first results were quite convincing, actually. Despite the global economic crisis, Turkey kept making progress and developed from a poor country with several third-world traits into a regional medium power. Although there were some suspicious signs, the country seemed for a long time to be able to manage the pressing cultural, religious and ethnic problems.

Perhaps we can now state that these goals were not accomplished and the changes at work since the mid 2010s clearly swept away the earlier achievements.

Starting out as a party intent on harmonizing Islam with a pro-West and pro-European progress, the AKP turned into a quasi party-state while President Erdoğan, who had risen from a rural, religious family to the political forefront, became a tyrant who uses the most brutal of means to subdue his opponents. 

The Turkish currency dropped to a fraction of its value within a couple of years, and Turkey’s former diplomatic influence faded away: the country’s relations with its surroundings is highly controversial again. The fully state-controlled media spreads conspiracy theories while the Kurdish peace process came to a complete halt and has been in reverse ever since.

Seeing the president threatening Western European diplomats makes it painfully clear that Turkey’s political system has got to the point where this “populist foreign policy” is the last resort for the government to try and cover up such problems as the economic depression and the growing crisis.

In a functional democracy, the judicial system and the inherent checks and balances would likely have intervened long ago.

However, Turkey had only one check in its system: the army, the brutality of which was just as far from the European norms as the political forces it acted against. Turkey doesn’t seem to have arrived where it set out nearly a century ago. The question is: will it ever arrive?

migration turkey
Read alsoEU enlargement commissioner calls for ‘new kind of partnership’ with Turkey

The opposition would authorise local governments to make mask-wearing compulsory

Hungary face mask Budapest
A cooperation dubbed ELEGY and formed by opposition parties, politicians and civil organisations has called for urgent government measures to slow the spread of coronavirus infections.
 
Vaccinations prevent severe cases of infection but cannot stop the spread of the virus, a statement by ELEGY member Democratic Cooperation (DK) said on Wednesday.

ELEGY demanded authorising local governments and other institutions to make mask-wearing compulsory. It also called on the government to make available mass antigen testing for Covid-19 free of charge, initially in educational institutions, the statement said. In an effort to simplify the process of getting vaccinated, ELEGY urged the government to cancel the requirement of pre-registration.
 
Budapest Mayor urges mandatory mask-wearing


The statement has been signed by politicians of DK, Jobbik, LMP, the Hungarian Liberal Party, the new Everyone’s Hungary Movement (MMM), Momentum, the Socialists and Párbeszéd, and representatives of ELEGY.
coronavirus-hospital-patient
Read alsoMore than 3,000 new COVID infections registered in only 24 hours

Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: Why we can’t make progress in the EU’s Western Balkans enlargement

EU flag
Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi:
 
If you’ve been following my weekly posts, you know that I have often focused on Western Balkans issues, not just because it’s a key region for my homeland Hungary, but also because the relations with the Western Balkans are one of the EU’s greatest dilemmas. In early October, Slovenia’s Brdo pri Kranju hosted a summit between EU member state leaders and the heads of the six Western Balkans countries. The European Parliament’s latest meeting in Strasbourg also discussed the Western Balkans situation and evaluated the summit as well. No matter how much we talk about it however, we hardly seem to make any progress in the matter. The reason lies in a paradox that’s tough to solve.

Many of us probably experienced a major impact on our world view as a student when we first realized that history was a highly subjective discipline of science. The truth of this statement is clearly demonstrated by how the European Parliament’s latest session evaluated the EU-Western Balkans summit held in Brdo pri Kranju. Within the span of just a few hours, we heard MEPs giving us starkly contrasting interpretations of the event held less than a month ago.

Let me just very briefly summarize the contents of the declaration adopted on 6 October 2021, since you already know the details from the media. The Western Balkans European integration prospects were reaffirmed once again and, along with emphasizing their dedication to connectivity and green transition, the participants also adopted a €30 billion Economic and Investment Plan (EIP). The latter will probably mean a significant boost for the citizens of the fairly underprivileged region.

My fellow MEPs who had a positive opinion about the summit did not hesitate to point that out. Are they right? I think so.

On the other hand, it’s hard not to notice what was missing from the declaration even though the region’s countries have been waiting for it for years: a clear and firm timeline for the Western Balkans’ accession to the EU. Nothing like that was given them again, which was a huge disappointment for many of them. Rightfully so, let’s admit. So to a certain degree, I must also agree with the politicians who considered the summit a failure for not making any real progress.

You could hardly deny that the affected states have been using their best efforts to meet the EU’s expectations.

However, each country suffers from certain limiting factors. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each Western Balkans state!

1.

Serbia has already been tied to the EU with a thousand threads despite its traditionally good relations with Russia. On the other hand, with the Serbian Progressive Party slowly growing into a party-state organization and Serbia’s Parliament currently lacking any opposition forces, the country has seen a clear and grave deterioration in terms of democracy and the rule of law in recent years. Another open issue is Serbia’s relations with Kosovo, which has again led to serious conflicts recently.

2.

Talking about Kosovo, you must mention the fundamental problem of its international recognition: it hasn’t even been recognized as an independent country by all EU member states. Compared to that, you may tend to disregard such supposedly secondary problems as the suspicious ties between the state and organized crime, the conflict with Serbia and the fact that Kosovo citizens still need visas in the Schengen area, while politicians talk about connectivity and green corridors in Brdo…

3.

North Macedonia even agreed to change the country’s name just so Greece would finally green-light the accession talks. Now the small state’s efforts are blocked by Bulgaria this time – on account of another historical dispute.

4.

To its great misfortune, Albania is treated as a part of the same package with North Macedonia. Furthermore, there are still serious concerns about the rule of law and organized crime there.

5.

Montenegro may stand out from the other Western Balkans states, but everything is relative: the ethnic, religious and political conflicts that stretch its neighbours apart pose a great challenge to Montenegro, too.

6.

When it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, even its statehood seems like a big question for the country itself, while it is also marred by ethnic conflicts as well as a heavily criticized but unchangeable constitution which actually forms a chapter of the Dayton Agreement. This problem is a hard nut to crack.

On top of these country-specific problems, there are also the rightful concerns of several EU member states: if the countries admitted in the 2000s still struggle with persistent rule of law problems, and corruption is actually worse in some of them than it was before their EU accession, then how could we be expected to handle the accession of six even more underprivileged countries? According to the sceptics, it’s clear as day that neither of the Western Balkans countries are ready for EU accession, and the situation is unlikely to change in the near future, especially as long as certain EU leaders, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Slovenian PM Janez Janša keep using the region for building their own illiberal backyard.

Despite my pro-enlargement stance, I can’t condemn the positions of the Western European states which don’t want to have another crisis area in the EU, let alone to give another boost to the populist forces.

On the other hand, we must also understand that if the Western Balkans countries are not given a clear and firm timeline for their European prospects in the near future, the situation will become worse. Russia, China and Turkey are no longer just standing at the gates of the region; they are actually very much present in the countries where the illiberal and populist leaders welcome their investments and voice their own chauvinistic and increasingly frequent anti-EU views, thus instigating and radicalising the already disappointed and frustrated population against Europe. If Europe wants to avoid a disaster, it must take action soon.

It’s a real Catch-22 situation: while the accession of the Western Balkans would pose an unprecedentedly high risk of the EU’s disintegration, any rejection would mean a potentially even bigger security and economic threat.

Original article HERE.

politics, PM
Read alsoFormer North Macedonian PM who fled to Hungary started a company in Pécel

Opposition PM candidate: 2022 election ‘over the freedom of the Hungarian nation’

Péter Márki-Zay Prime Ministerial Candidate of the Joint Hungarian Opposition for 2022

Péter Márki-Zay, the opposition’s prime ministerial candidate, addressing supporters at a commemoration of the 1956 revolution in Budapest on Saturday, said the message of joining together embodied in uprising 65 years ago was still relevant today, and next year’s general election would be a “colossal battle”.

Márki-Zay said the battle was over “the freedom of the Hungarian nation”. “Together for a Free Hungary!” he declaimed.

He called for the ruling Fidesz party to be denied a parliamentary majority next spring.

“With total national unity, now we can demonstrate that we are the majority,” he said, adding that the current power holders were “morally unacceptable”.

Márki-Zay, who is also the mayor of Hódmezővásárhely, said the opposition’s current battle should be inspired by the youth of 1956, “but it should also be peaceful, not armed”.

Péter Márki-Zay Prime Ministerial Candidate of the Joint Hungarian Opposition for 2022
Joint opposition commemoration event on October 23
Photo: MTI/Szigetváry Zsolt

“We’re fighting for a country of love,” he said, adding that for this, every single Hungarian was needed.

Gyurcsány: opposition parties running together far more important than DK

Speaking at the joint event of Hungary’s opposition parties, Márki-Zay said that people today were as sick and tired as they had been in 1956. They were fed up, he insisted, with the “party state”, with “falling behind the West”, and with “poverty, intimidation, political cronyism, mounting Russian influence and hate campaigns.”

“Only together can we win,” he said, adding: “Go Hungary! Go Hungarians!”

Márki-Zay pledged to hold a referendum on adopting a new constitution and an independent judiciary, and he vowed for Hungary to join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. He promised freedom of the press, the autonomy of local government and a new electoral law. He also vowed that Hungary would join the single currency.

The foreign media picked up the Hungarian pre-election

The prime ministerial candidate also promised to keep Hungary’s fence on the southern border intact. But, he added, “criminal migrants imported by Fidesz” would be expelled from the country.

Officials who had profited from migration and deals to import the Chinese coronavirus vaccine “for double the market price”, as well as ventilators that went unused, would be held accountable, he said.

Márki-Zay said Hungary would be a place in which skin colour nor race would not be factors in determining a person’s opportunities. “Even Fidesz politicians” would be free to declare their homosexuality, he added.

He insisted that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s family and friends were also in the fight for the country, “so we must be ready for lies and slander campaigns”. He said the opposition would be landed with accusations of “settling migrants”, plans to “put up prices” and of conspiring with [former Socialist prime minister] Ferenc Gyurcsány, against whom, he added, allegations of corruption had been left unproven after 12 years.

Viktor Orbán’s speech at the commemoration ceremony of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

Referring to government tax and support measures announced before the election, he insisted Fidesz “has even started working for you” under the pressure of a resurgent opposition.

He said young people would have the biggest role to play in spreading the opposition’s message ahead of the election.

Jobbik leader Péter Jakab noted that a year ago six opposition party leaders vowed to put their candidates running for the post of prime minister on a common stage today. “Here were are; we’re together and we’ll win”

Klára Dobrev, the Democratic Coalition MEP who lost to Márki-Zay in the primary run-off, said that being a democrat meant embracing diversity and encouraging diversity in everyday life. This, she added, would be a great strength in the battle with the “monolith system of Viktor Orbán”.

“Next spring, we either win together or we all fail. This is our responsibility,” she added.

Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest who stepped aside before the run-off, said the opposition was getting ready for “a gentle revolution” in the spirit of fulfilling the promise of October 23, 1956, and 1989.

He insisted that October 23, 2021, marked the birth of “the fourth republic”, making Hungary “our common homeland once again”.

All those who competed in the opposition’s primary then took to the stage together at the end of the event.

1956 Hungarian Revolution Commemoration Freedom March
Read alsoHuge masses attend the commemoration of the 65th anniv. of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

Jobbik MEP: What is Orbánism and what is not Orbánism?

Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi:

Unsurprisingly, such terms as “Orbánism” or “illiberalism”, as heralded by the Hungarian prime minister, have become buzzwords and points of reference for many journalists, politicians and other opinion shapers socialized in the European political culture. Although our community’s fundamental values have hardly been openly challenged by anyone inside the European Union before Orbán, I would still warn against crying “Orbánism” whenever you see an ambitious politician resorting to dubious means in order to achieve their goals. Why? Because it prevents you from recognizing the Orbán regime’s true anomalies…

In the last few days I have been frequently asked to comment on Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’ resignation or Czech PM Andrej Babiš’ fall in the election. I’m not surprised by the interest – as a member of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET), I am often asked to evaluate political situations, especially when it comes to the Central European region. However, I was certainly surprised how easily journalists and the general public have been labelling European politicians and countries as “Orbánist”.

The purpose of this post is neither to defend nor to condemn Austria’s resigned chancellor. He himself and Austria’s judicial system will do so instead of me. 

This brings me to the point we need to understand in order to see what Hungary’s real problem is.

Sebastian Kurz landed in the Austrian and European political arena as a comet. His youth, his unconventional style and his obvious talent for politics have been a matter of speculation before, too. However, the latest accusations seem to suggest that the young chancellor may have been clinging to his power a bit too much and perhaps used some illegal means to keep it. The serious accusations have led to Sebastian Kurz’s resignation. Now it’s the judicial system’s job to investigate whether he committed the alleged acts. Like it or not, actions that are now attributed to Kurz are nothing new in politics. There have been and there will unfortunately be politicians who resort to dishonest means. That’s why we have the rule of law, the system of checks and balances, the independent judiciary and democratic norms in general to help us investigate such cases and hold these politicians to account if they are proven guilty.

Former Czech PM Andrej Babiš was another often criticized figure in European politics. 

His government term was marred by a series of scandals, but overall, Babiš was the head of a fairly fragile government and he lost the last election albeit with a narrow margin. He admitted his defeat and the Czech Republic will soon see the formation of a new government. We have always had and will continue to have scandal-prone, controversial politicians. That’s why we have the rule of law framework to let people get rid of the politicians who cross the boundaries.

The above two cases are typical examples of how a healthy democracy and the rule of law works. Orbánism and illiberalism are something utterly different: they have neither the rule of law, nor judicial independence. The fairness of the elections is highly questionable as well.

When you live in Orbánism, it is inconceivable that any scandal, no matter how big it is, would shake the power of the prime minister. 

Instead, it is you who should be afraid of the consequences if you present incriminating evidence against those in power, because every court is under the government’s direct political control. When political leaders cross boundaries or get caught up in some malpractice, most citizens don’t even hear about it, because the controlled media either hushes up the embarrassing cases or completely re-contextualizes them, just like in Soviet times.

Let me ask all of you to refrain from using “Orbánism” as a general political stigma. If you use it too much and too generally, you will wash the Orbán regime clean. The regime operators’ goal is to appear nothing more than slightly unconventional while they build a dictatorship. They are not just unconventional. Let’s not help them blur the lines. The country where dishonest politicians are held to account by the court or the nation is a functional democracy. 

The country where they can get away with anything is an Orbánist regime. That’s what “Orbánism” means. It’s as simple as that.

Jobbik MEP: The EU is forced to act – How long can we let our common norms be questioned?

European Union Flage
Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi:

The EU’s operation has always been characterized by a certain kind of lumbering bureaucracy when it comes to making hard decisions. In recent years however, the community has more and more frequently suffered serious losses due to its indecision. The Polish constitutional court’s decision to deem certain elements of EU law incompatible with Polish law is just another sign that the European Union can no longer “get away with” failing to take a stance in sensitive issues. Europe is forced to act – but will we realize it?

 

The Polish constitutional court’s decision to deem certain elements of EU law incompatible with Polish law and to state that Poland’s constitution overrides EU law did not come out of the blue. Together with Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, Poland’s governing Law and Justice Party (PiS) has long been testing the EU’s tolerance and trying to distance itself politically from the community and its norms. As a part of these efforts, the Warsaw government has been trying for years to subdue the Polish judicial system to its own political goals by displacing, threatening and sanctioning judges. Fitting into this pattern, the latest decision was made under political pressure, more specifically, upon Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki’s request.

Despite all of that, Poland has so far been able to escape any EU sanctions since another increasingly authoritarian EU member state government, i.e., that of Hungary, has always prevented the initiation of the Article 7 proceedings against Warsaw. In the meantime, Warsaw (just like Budapest) conducted a communication campaign by cherry-picking various European “examples” to suggest that Poland was just doing things that may as well happen in other member states. It is indeed true that Germany’s constitutional court has already questioned the supremacy of EU law in certain cases, but the procedure was met with serious criticism and growing concerns within the community even back then.

Additionally, the latest Polish decision went much further: it questioned the general applicability of EU law in Poland based on political motivations, no less.

The decision may shake the EU’s legal system in its foundations because it may allow Poland to arbitrarily remove itself from under EU law, thus creating a dangerous precedent for other governments and starting such a domino effect that may lead to the European Union being deprived of its substance and becoming irrelevant even in the short run.

It is more clear than ever that the EU can no longer put off settling sensitive issues like this, since the challenges just seem to keep piling up while Brussels’ weak reactions obviously encourage the leaders with a vested interest in the total destruction of the community. The EU is forced to act, and while the concerns about a strong response potentially playing into the hands of Polish anti-EU forces may be justified, the failure to adequately respond to the voices aiming to disintegrate the EU’s legal order from within may be even worse: it may place a heavy burden on EU-Poland relations as well as lead to a political crisis engulfing the whole of Europe.

But what can the EU do in a situation like this? The Article 7 and infringement proceedings are clearly slow and ineffective.

Since 1 January 2021 however, the Commission has been able to apply the rule of law mechanism which was adopted for the exact purpose of settling situations like this.

In addition, Warsaw has been waiting for the €36 billion from the economic recovery package where the rule of law aspects can also be applied, and it’s vital to apply them too, because if Warsaw no longer considers itself to be governed by EU law, then Europe will lose any remaining control over the use of those funds.

The question is: will Europe finally put its foot down or just lie idly by while the “illiberal” politicians simply dismantle the structure built by democrats over the past seventy years?

Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: Hungarian opposition takes the initiative

Klára Dobrev Opposition

Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi:

We can safely say that Hungary has not been the country of unexpected political turns during the thirty years since the collapse of communism. Of course, this should not come a surprise as the high winner compensation that was incorporated into the electoral system for the sake of stability made the Hungarian elections a competition of large blocks even before 2010. And we all remember what happened after 2010: an unequal battle between Fidesz, a giga-party that uses state funds, and some small opposition forces constantly undermined by the big one. However, a couple of days ago all of this ended once and for all. The opposition has taken the initiative.

What we saw in the opposition primaries last week was the result of a long learning curve. Being cornered, bled out and even devastated through politically motivated fines by the incumbent Fidesz enjoying unlimited resources and the support of the state administration apparatus, the opposition parties began to realize even before the 2018 elections that they hardly had a chance to combat Viktor Orbán’s regime on their own. However, ideological differences and old habits proved stronger than political rationale. The result was yet another overwhelming Fidesz victory leading to the continuous deconstruction of democracy and the rule of law for four more years.

Opposition: Primaries only way to nominate credible candidates in 2022

Drifting away from the European Union, Hungary’s post-2018 political landscape became more and more similar to countries like Belarus. The opposition was fragmented and weak, so the governing Fidesz could do whatever they wanted. The political discourse completely lost its debating nature because the governing party felt no need to engage in a conversation with anyone outside its own circles. In the meantime, Fidesz continued occupying state institutions. The first crack in the regime’s wall came with the municipal elections in 2019, when centre-left, liberal and green parties, which had been fighting amongst each other as well, managed to achieve local agreements with the representatives of centre-right Jobbik to run joint candidates.

The cooperation was hugely successful: the opposition won district after district in major provincial cities and Budapest.

However, it was already clear back then that the real challenge lied in raising this cooperation to a national level for the parliamentary elections. While political differences could often be set aside in municipal elections for the sake of representing local issues, and local organizations were given a free rein to develop their own formula of cooperation, the parliamentary elections were a different story: the opposition had to come up with a united programme and list of representatives as well as a common set of rules to select the candidates for the single-member constituencies and, ultimately, the candidate for Prime Minister.

So the opposition parties decided to lay the final decision in the citizens’ hands by holding a primary election where each opposition party can run its candidate and then endorse the winner of the competition.

Hungarian opposition primary hacked by China?

Despite being a completely new concept in Hungary, the primary election was a great success. Why?

  1. The opposition could finally become the key player in the campaign and the implementation of the primaries. Parties with roughly equal resources had equal chances in terms of presenting themselves and their candidates. The agenda was not determined by Fidesz’ governing dominance, but the opposition parties themselves.
  2. The primary election campaign brought back some classic political methods that had long been gone from Hungary: candidates had actual debates with each other to demonstrate and contrast their positions. Since the competition was open-ended, no candidate could afford to avoid the debate or rely purely on logistics to win.
  3. The opposition became visible in areas where Fidesz had absolutely dominated the political discourse before. The primary election tents were set up and the performance of the local opposition candidates became the subject of discussion in such rural districts where the governing party had monopolized the discourse for ten years.
  4. The opposition managed to reinvigorate its own voters. Over 600 thousand citizens cast their ballots in the primaries, allowing the candidates to gain a lot of campaign experience and contacts, which will most likely come handy in the “live” elections next year.

In the meantime, Fidesz actually lost its ability to thematize the political discourse for a long time, and they couldn’t really compensate for this loss by constantly trying to present the opposition primaries as a deception and fraud. In fact, the governing party fell under pressure because many of its own voters could see that, in contrast with Fidesz’ stale politics and one-man control, there was an alternative public discourse where anyone with political aspirations had to enter into debates, have their positions challenged and, ultimately, enter the primaries to win the right to run as a candidate.

All of this is in stark contrast with Fidesz’ common practice where Viktor Orbán single-handedly selects the party’s candidates.

The changes this process triggered in Hungarian politics are clearly shown by how a Budapest candidate of the governing party which has been avoiding any contact with the opposition for eleven years, has already signed up for a debate with his opposition challenger. So not only did the primaries meet the expectations in the sense that the opposition is now able to run joint MP candidates with high legitimacy in 2022, thus making it a real competition, but the process also allowed Hungary’s political discourse to take a step towards normality in the European sense.

Of course, the greatest match is still coming up: to defeat Fidesz in April 2022. However, this goal seems to be closer than ever.

Read alsoIt’s like in Netflix’s House of Cards: former PM Gyurcsány’s wife wins opposition primary

Budapest Demographic Summit held life in an alternate reality, says Jobbik MEP

Budapest-demography-conference
 

Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi, press release:

Hungary’s capital has been hosting more and more bizarre political meetings, thanks to the increasing international isolation and drifting to the far-right of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party. Organized under the name of 4th Budapest Demographic Summit, this exorbitantly high-budget event’s themes and messages would be the pride of any rogue far-right force cut off from the world.

Not that demography isn’t an important issue. It very much is. In Hungary, the combined effect of population decline and massive westward emigration is causing critical problems such as the shortage of skilled labour and the impending collapse of social security systems. Of course, this is not a Hungarian specialty; all of Central Europe and the Balkans struggle with similar challenges. 

Consequently, it certainly appears odd how Viktor Orbán’s government keeps boasting about its achievements to make Hungary a great place for families over the past ten years, right when hundreds of thousands of Hungarians migrated to Western Europe.

Naturally, neither Hungarian Minister for Families Katalin Novák, the event’s only female speaker, nor Viktor Orbán had to fear being held to account for that by any of the guests, whose list features such “recognized” names as former US Vice President Mike Pence as well as Orbán’s old pals: Slovenia’s ex-convict Prime Minister Janez Janša, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, whose country has no opposition in the parliament, and extremist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who is generally considered by the international public as a Russian puppet. All these politicians, who are so busy scourging liberals, depicting Brussels as an anti-family conspirator and talking about the importance of supporting families, carefully avoided the problem that if the protection of families is so important for them, then how can all their countries (apart from Mike Pence’s homeland) be on the brink of a demographic disaster while a lot of their people emigrate to the supposedly anti-family and Marxist Western Europe where children are, according to Orbán, “misguided”.

As a Hungarian citizen and a centre-right, conservative politician, I also believe it’s important to support families. On the other hand, Orbán’s and his guests’ delusional and unrealistic speculations appear to me as the last self-aggrandizing gestures of a dictatorship on the verge of its final collapse.

Back in 2017, when my partners and I launched the Citizens’ Initiative for a European Wage Union, our goal was to let Hungary and the states of the Central European region finally catch up with Western Europe in terms of their economies and living standards as well. 

We set this goal because we saw we had no other chance. If the people of Central Europe can’t make a decent living that is worthy of a human being and can’t enjoy the same workers’ rights as in Western Europe, our countries will soon be empty. At the time, Fidesz spared no effort to undermine this initiative.

In today’s Hungary, the government’s oft-quoted family support system mainly consists of loan schemes offered to our young people. While a lot of families become indebted, more and more people decide they want to start their lives neither on a loan nor on a pittance handed out by the government. They want decent salaries instead. For that, they need to go to Western Europe. 

As long as this situation remains, Orbán’s and his friends’ far-right platitudes are no more than a deception. It is an alternate reality; something that can’t be sustained forever.

mobile smartphone
Read alsoThe Pegasus-affair is an attack on European values, says Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi

Hungarian opposition primary hacked by China?

Hungary primaries Budapest

The background IT system collapsed in the first hours of the primary last Saturday. First, the opposition parties said that too many voters wanted to simultaneously use the system on Saturday. Later, they said that the Hungarian government was behind the system failure. Now, they are saying that the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks came from China.

According to hvg.hu, the opposition primary continued today at 7 am. Dávid Bedő, a Momentum member of the national committee organising the primaries, said that the opposition parties and the organising aHang group ran many DDoS tests on Sunday. None of them harmed the system, so they cleared they were ready for the primaries to continue today.

First, the organisers said that too many voters wanted to simultaneously use the system on Saturday. Therefore, they added that what happened was

the “celebration of democracy”.

Later, they talked about a targeted cyber attack committed by the government. However, they did not show any evidence supporting their accusations. Meanwhile, the government or the government parties remained silent on Saturday. Fidesz reacted only on Sunday, saying that the opposition should not blame others for their errors.

The first round of the primaries will be between September 20 and 28, while the second round’s planned times are October 4-10. The original final date was September 26, 8 pm, regarding the first round, which was extended for 48 hours because of the system collapse.

 

 

Dávid Bedő said that the system ran in a different IT environment from today, so they could protect it from hackers. The organisers asked cyber security experts to

detect the source and method of the DDoS attack.

They include Ferenc Frész, senior cyber security expert of the Cyber Services Ltd. who used to work with NATO and the Council of the EU in similar projects.

Bedő said that harming the system was in the government’s interest, and they already knew that the attack could come from China.

Based on media reports, people

wait in long queues

in Budapest and the cities to vote in the primaries. However, in the countryside, opportunities to cast ballots is limited.

The primaries aim to choose the PM candidate of the six opposition parties and the opponents of Fidesz in the 106 constituencies.

Hungary Karácsony Budapest
Read alsoOpposition PM candidate Karácsony was not qualified to teach at Corvinus university?

The background IT system collapsed in the first hours of the primary last Saturday. First, the opposition parties said that too many voters wanted to simultaneously use the system on Saturday. Later, they said that the Hungarian government was behind the system failure. Now, they are saying that the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks came from China.

According to hvg.hu, the opposition primary continued today at 7 am. Dávid Bedő, a Momentum member of the national committee organising the primaries, said that the opposition parties and the organising aHang group ran many DDoS tests on Sunday. None of them harmed the system, so they cleared they were ready for the primaries to continue today.

First, the organisers said that too many voters wanted to simultaneously use the system on Saturday. Therefore, they added that what happened was

the “celebration of democracy”.

Later, they talked about a targeted cyber attack committed by the government. However, they did not show any evidence supporting their accusations. Meanwhile, the government or the government parties remained silent on Saturday. Fidesz reacted only on Sunday, saying that the opposition should not blame others for their errors.

The first round of the primaries will be between September 20 and 28, while the second round’s planned times are October 4-10. The original final date was September 26, 8 pm, regarding the first round, which was extended for 48 hours because of the system collapse.

 

 

Dávid Bedő said that the system ran in a different IT environment from today, so they could protect it from hackers. The organisers asked cyber security experts to

detect the source and method of the DDoS attack.

They include Ferenc Frész, senior cyber security expert of the Cyber Services Ltd. who used to work with NATO and the Council of the EU in similar projects.

Bedő said that harming the system was in the government’s interest, and they already knew that the attack could come from China.

Based on media reports, people

wait in long queues

in Budapest and the cities to vote in the primaries. However, in the countryside, opportunities to cast ballots is limited.

The primaries aim to choose the PM candidate of the six opposition parties and the opponents of Fidesz in the 106 constituencies.

Parliament committee declares meeting on spy software confidential

national security committee hungary parliament

Parliament’s national security committee declared its meeting on the issue of Pegasus, an Israeli spy software, confidential for 50 years, the chairman of the committee said on Monday.

János Stummer, of Jobbik, said Interior Minister Sándor Pintér and Pál Völner, a state secretary of the justice ministry, attended the meeting, as well as four ruling party members of the committee.

Opposition members had proposed setting up an investigative subcommittee, but the majority voted against the motion, Stummer said.

The government officials “did not deny that politicians and journalists had been surveilled,” Stummer said.

Zsolt Molnár, the committee’s Socialist member, said the meeting’s “only merit was that it had quorum”. Lacking “to the point, unequivocal answers, the suspicion of obfuscation and secrecy grew”, he said. Without an investigative committee, “we can only debate issues of faith,” he said.

Péter Ungár of LMP said that

while national security was an important national interest, “it would be good to know how many times [was the spy software used] in the country’s interest and how many times in [Prime Minister] Viktor Orbán’s”.

Last month, data protection authority NAIH said it had launched an official investigation into press reports that the spyware licenced by the Israeli NSO Group had been used to hack the mobile phones of specific targets in multiple countries.

Snowden
Read alsoEdward Snowden: “Hungary gave the most incriminating response”

The Pegasus-affair is an attack on European values, says Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi

mobile smartphone
 

Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi, press release:

The European Parliament’s latest meeting witnessed something that rarely happens. Every party family, from the far-left to the far-right, came to a nearly complete consensus on an issue involving ideological matters. There was only one party sticking out like a sore thumb: Viktor Orbán’s now independent Fidesz, which has been using increasingly dictatorial measures in Hungary. The issue itself was an illegal surveillance scandal in which Orbán’s regime seems to be the most affected.

The scandal broke out in Hungary right before the onset of the summer slack season. As it was revealed, Viktor Orbán’s government had been tapping hundreds of phones, using the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware. The list of the victims was soon leaked, and it contained the names of opposition politicians, journalists as well as citizens who are not actively involved in politics. Presumably, the latter were surveyed on account of their pro-opposition views. While the affair is either ignored or misinterpreted by the long Fidesz-occupied and micromanaged public media and its attached propaganda outlets, the government’s politicians keep parroting that no unlawful activity took place at all.

However, the only fragment of truth in their statements is that each dictatorship lays down its own laws to fall back on when it comes to explaining their violations. Of course, I am not naive.

I am fully aware that every country, including the democratic states, conducts secret surveillance activities and taps the phones of certain individuals to control terrorist and criminal groups and to protect our society and security.

Nevertheless, considering the fact that it means an interference with the private sphere of citizens, such acts are subject to very serious conditions in the law of every democratic country. What does all this mean in practice? It means that all secret surveillance activities must be conducted without any violation of the law: either as part of an investigation subject to a judge’s permission, or with the government’s permission in a matter of national security for a limited period and with respect to proportionality. Either way, the activity must be stopped as soon as it no longer helps the investigation or the person under surveillance proves to be innocent. This system is under parliamentary control in every democratic country, and the process must remain as transparent as possible under the circumstances.

In contrast, Hungary’s legal regulations for surveillance have always been quite loose ever since the collapse of communism: the minister of justice can, even acting on political instructions, permit the “lawful” surveillance of anyone in Hungary for an unlimited period without the target being a suspect. 

In fact, the number of people kept under surveillance with the minister’s permission has grown drastically year by year under the Fidesz government’s rule, while the pro-government majority has successfully been blocking the work of the Parliament’s National Security Committee by simply refusing to attend the meetings.

In today’s Hungary, secret service operations are clearly not conducted in an effort to protect the society and public order according to the European democratic norms. Instead, they are done based on political instructions, abusing the existing regulatory framework in order to keep the Orbán regime’s potential opponents under surveillance. Unfortunately, it hardly comes as a surprise to anyone who has been involved in Hungarian politics over the past years. 

Fidesz has already dismantled and emptied all constitutional checks and balances, the state institutions are unashamedly used for partisan purposes and the surveillance operations are ordered by the current occupant of the justice minister’s seat Judit Varga, whose professional achievement can sufficiently be summed up as being the most aggressive mouthpiece of Viktor Orbán’s political clichés.

In the meantime, Orbán has developed friendships with such leaders as the Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka, while pro-Fidesz intellectuals more and more frequently demand that Hungary should leave the European Union.

Surprisingly enough, the European institutions didn’t seem to have taken notice of all this until very recently. If we are serious about the European Union being a real value-based community and having no place for governments that persecute their own citizens and disrespect the rule of law and democracy, then we have to make it clear that the Orbán regime has long crossed every possible red line. Next year Hungary will hold parliamentary elections where the opposition parties, having shown great wisdom and dedication to democracy, rose above their earlier grievances and ideological disputes, and agreed to form a united front to face the Fidesz regime. On the other hand, you mustn’t entertain any illusions if Orbán and Fidesz would stop at anything to prevent the people of Hungary from expressing their real opinions. They wouldn’t. 

That’s why it’s so important for European institutions not to tolerate any violation of the law and reject any government that openly defies democracy. Orbán has to go, but we, Hungarians want to stay where we belong: in Europe.

Hungary agriculture-train-land
Read alsoJobbik criticises government land purchase scheme

Hungary’s parliament to start autumn season with two-day session

Budapest parliament winter Hungarian flag

Hungary’s parliament will begin its autumn season with a two-day session on September 20 with a debate on pandemic-related measures on the agenda on Tuesday, according to a draft schedule posted on its website.

Monday’s session is scheduled to begin at 1pm with commemorations of four former MPs who passed away over the summer.

Similarly to the routine of previous years, parliament’s autumn session is expected to open with an address of the prime minister.

Tuesday’s session is set to begin at 9am with a final vote on lifting the immunity of two lawmakers for opposition Jobbik and one for ruling Fidesz.

The session will continue with a general debate on the government’s proposal to prolong the special measures related to the coronavirus pandemic until Jan. 1.

As we wrote before, Attila Mesterházy, the Socialist deputy head of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, turned to the director general of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (AH) to ask about the use of the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware in Hungary. Details HERE

budapest parliament pixabay
Read alsoWhat secrets does the Hungarian Parliament hide?

Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: Afghanistan – the fall of the West?

afghanistan
 

Press release – It takes a very important event for a series of photos to become a world sensation in August, right in the middle of the summer holidays. The images taken in Kabul during the aftermath of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan have achieved just that, and not without a reason. The utter collapse of the Afghan state in a matter of days and the Taliban takeover must make all of us think.

 

Sadly enough, we must realize that the two-decade-long Afghanistan activity of the US and its allies from 2001 to 2021 was a total failure. Of course, some analysts and opinion makers were quick to point out that the US was not the first great power to come a cropper in Afghanistan, or that the US had long lost interest in this poor and problematic Central Asian country. 

Nevertheless, I still believe it’s important for the western world to realize its mistakes made in Afghanistan and to learn from them, too.

If you compare Afghanistan’s 2001 late summer status quo with that of 2021, you can surely conclude that the country’s situation is more hopeless than ever: while the anti-Taliban “Northern Alliance” was present at least in some areas of the country back in 2001, the Taliban now has complete control over Afghanistan with nothing to challenge their power. Also, while the Taliban system was an isolated regime in 2001, by now they have gotten to the point where more and more countries are considering their de jure recognition as well. If all of that wasn’t enough, the western withdrawal was accompanied by the on-stage appearance of an ever-strengthening China which will hardly make a fuss about human rights issues where it sniffs a strategic and business opportunity. But how could all this happen?

The US and its allies invested an enormous amount of money and energy into building the Afghan state, but they failed to consider the fundamental traits of the Afghan society. 

Looking somewhat messianistic at times, the project was aimed at developing a tribal society into a 21st-century democracy. While trying to construct the Afghan state, they completely ignored the fact that Afghanistan was a multi-ethnic and diverse country where the core element of people’s lives is their ethnicity rather than their citizenship in the modern sense. They disregarded the huge difference between the internationally minded Kabul, the local provincial centres and the Afghan rural areas still living in feudalism to this day, and you can’t skip centuries of cultural and societal development by making a few laws. As a result, they failed to find a solution to a situation where the Afghan central government had little control over the country, while the theoretically allied warlords and militia took the Afghan state just as seriously as the Afghan military that had been trained for astronomical sums but simply collapsed in the fateful moment: not at all.

We must realize that the wishful image of a pro-western Afghanistan marching towards democracy with masses of female university students was real in only a few streets of inner city Kabul at best. 

We didn’t want to see and understand why the Taliban movement can constantly be present or where it gets its supply and social backing from.

Let’s not deceive ourselves: the country could not have been taken in three days without hardly any rifle shots if they had not enjoyed the support of many Afghan people. I am talking about the Afghan people we failed to give any prospects to in 20 years. Instead, we put a weak and corrupt government over their heads, generating a constant civil war.

The exploding post-withdrawal chaos was like an admission of failure, while the fact that we could hardly do anything to rescue the Afghans who did their best for the model offered by the western countries and truly believed in it, is nothing short of a moral fall for us. 

After seeing the images taken at the Kabul airport, we can hardly expect anyone living in an authoritarian regime to openly dedicate themselves to democratic values from now on. 

Unlike us, religious extremists can be happy: they can feel justified in their belief that if they keep fighting persistently, they may even get recognized by the international community.

With increasing frequency over the past months, I have been forced to come to the conclusion that if we, i.e., western democracies, want to avoid becoming the minority and being surrounded by a growing number of authoritarian and, in fact, terrorist-leaning regimes, it’s high time for us to show more interest and empathy towards the other parts of the world. And we should be able to make sacrifices when it comes to that, too. It would be in our interest. If we fail to realize that, we’ll have nobody but ourselves to blame.

Opposition Jobbik calls for foundation of new state

jakab péter

Péter Jakab, the head of the opposition Jobbik party, called for the foundation of a new state rooted in cooperation in a speech commemorating the August 20 national holiday on Friday.

Speaking in a video message posted on Facebook, Jakab said a “new national unity” had been created through the cooperation of the opposition politicians.

“Conservatives and liberals, right- and left-wing politicians from Budapest and rural areas are all fighting together so that this country can finally leave the path of poverty and fear and find the path of freedom and prosperity,” he said.

“The current ruler of the Buda Castle has abandoned all the values that St. Stephen once represented,” Jakab said.

One thousand years ago the king chose the West and Europe, “founded a state, and not foundations, and organised a church, and not a mafia”, the politician added.

Jakab reiterated his promise that if his party came to power next year, Hungary would join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and set up a new anti-corruption office.

“No more crimes will be left unpunished; this will be the new national minimum from 2022,” Jakab said.

august 20 fireworks
Read alsoHungary marks its National Holiday with magnificent fireworks – Photos

Did the government really wiretap Hungarian journalists and businessmen?

Viktor Orbán police
The opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) is turning to five ministers and the public prosecutor, requesting answers on the purchase of Pegasus, and whether the spy software was used to wiretap Hungarian journalists and businessmen.
 
DK deputy leader Ágnes Vadai told an online press conference on Friday that Israeli company NSO’s software had been developed to harvest data from mobile phones. The software was
used to surveille Hungarian investigative journalists, businessmen and their acquaintances,
as well as “at least one mayor”, Vadai said.

In the “biggest scandal of modern Hungarian democracy”, indirect evidence has come to light that the Hungarian government was behind the surveillance, she said. DK is now turning to Interior Minister Sándor Pintér, Finance Minister Mihály Varga, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, Head of the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás, Justice Minister Judit Varga and Public Prosecutor Péter Polt to ask
which institution purchased the software and to request explanation on the use it was put to.
“Such actions cannot remain without consequences, investigative journalists are wiretapped only in the darkest dictatorships,” Vadai said. Surveilling Hungarians with foreign software is “treason”, she said.

Meanwhile, all parties of
the parliamentary opposition called on majority members of parliament’s national security committee “not to thwart” a Monday meeting on Pegasus.
“If governing party members of the committee fail to turn up for Monday’s session the opposition will take that as an admission,” DK, Jobbik, LMP, Momentum, the Socialist Party, and Párbeszéd said in a joint statement.
 
Signatories to the statement also said that government ministers had recently made “contradictory, wishy-washy statements” and “did not deny” application of the contested spyware. They noted that János Stummer, the Jobbik-delegated head of the parliamentary committee, had convened a meeting for Monday, to hear the interior and foreign ministers behind closed doors.
 
 
Featured image: illustration

Fidesz: loosening national, religious and gender identity first step in losing sovereignty

Hungary debate politics
Lawmakers of five Hungarian parliamentary parties discussed issues around national identity and sovereignty at a roundtable panel held at the Summer Open University in the Carpathian Basin in Sátoraljaújhely, in north-eastern Hungary, on Friday afternoon.
 
Máté Kocsis, group leader of ruling Fidesz, said that “loosening national, religious and gender identity is the first, decisive step towards individuals and communities losing their sovereignty”.
“All three identities have come under attack in European public discourse
and the liberal mainstream media,” he said, adding that “these attacks have sneaked into domestic politics as well”.

Kocsis said that strong identity is a precondition of sovereignty, adding that “great powers are taking away that sovereignty from other states while small countries are fighting for their own”. “Hungarians have a kind of ability to gain sovereignty by fighting for it, this is why it is worth judging Hungary’s position through a central European eye,” Kocsis said.

István Simicskó, group leader of the co-ruling Christian Democrats, called globalisation, integration and migration as the three main challenges Hungary is facing. He said that all nations should be aware of their capabilities and values.
“The future of Hungary definitely lies in a strong, sovereign state based on stable values and a strong sense of identity,”
Simicskó said.
 
László Lóránt Keresztes, group leader of LMP, said the policy towards Hungarian communities abroad should never be the subject of partisan disputes. “It is the responsibility of all of us to be more successful in this area,” he said.

Attila Mesterházy, of the Socialists, said that the government’s policy towards ethnic Hungarian organisations abroad is aimed at increasing their dependence on Budapest.
Koloman Brenner, of Jobbik, called his party “a guarantee” for ensuring that the rights of Hungarian communities beyond the borders will not be curtailed by anyone.

Jobbik criticises government land purchase scheme

Hungary agriculture-train-land

The government’s plan to set up a private fund of 100 billion forints (EUR 278m) to purchase farmland “stinks” and “raises a number of questions”, according to an expert of opposition Jobbik.

As we wrote yesterday, the government decided to create a private capital fund to buy arable land in Eastern and Central Europe. They would like to help the foreign expansion of Hungarian agriculture companies abroad through the fund. Details HERE.

Zoltán Magyar said in a statement on Monday that his party had been against selling off state-owned land “from the beginning” adding that ruling Fidesz had “sold out one of the remaining bits of national assets at a brutal pace”. He insisted that “the largest and most valuable properties have landed with the gentry close to the government”.

Magyar went on to say that

under the current plans “land purchased with taxpayers’ money will again end up with the elite” close to ruling Fidesz.

According to Jobbik, in the time before next year’s elections, the government is “trying to help itself to the most possible public funds and national assets”.

Hungary agriculture-train-land
Read alsoJobbik criticises government land purchase scheme

Is Moldova’s future to unite with Romania?

Remarks from Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi:

Moldova may potentially have solved a long political crisis by helping a pro-West political force to a landslide victory in the recent snap parliamentary elections. The election result means a historic opportunity for both Moldova and Europe, but the small Eastern European country still has a long way to go. It is Europe’s responsibility to help rather than hinder Moldova in taking the necessary steps.

Often referred to as one of the poorest countries in Europe, Moldova, ever since it became independent, has been struggling with many typical Central Eastern European problems, one of which alone is quite enough to significantly complicate the life of a country. Having gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991,

Moldova has seen quite a turbulent history.

Due to its geographical location, it has always been in the focus of both western and eastern geopolitical efforts, which have had their effect on the country’s life to this day.

The national identity of the vast Romanian-speaking majority has often been the subject of heated debates since the pro-West forces typically consider themselves as part of the Romanian nation and urge for a closer cooperation with Romania, while the pro-Moscow entities, somewhat revisiting Soviet-era narratives, believe Moldovans are a separate nation, despite their close relation with Romanians. Besides the two main camps, Moldova has many smaller groups with highly diverse ideas and political goals that don’t always refrain from extremism. For example, there are

Romanian nationalists who urge for an immediate unification with Romania, while some Moldovan nationalist groups even voice territorial claims against Romania based on the legacy of the Medieval Principality of Moldavia.

Apart from the Romanian-speaking community, there are other significant ethnic groups such as the Turkic-speaking but Orthodox Christian Gagauz with their own territorial autonomy, as well as the Russians and Ukrainians who mainly live in the breakaway state officially called Transnistria. The status of Transnistria poses some major questions in terms of Moldova’s future. The breakaway region engaged in a brief war with the newly-independent Moldova back in 1992 and has been functioning as a quasi independent state with some Russian backing ever since. Paradoxically, the region also has a significant influence on Moldovan politics, because its inhabitants reliably vote for pro-Moscow forces (just like the the country’s other minorities).

After a long history of dependence on external power centres,

no wonder Moldova’s past thirty years have seen a lot of debate on which block the now independent country should commit to: Europe or the post-Soviet region?

However, while the political pendulum was swinging so intensely for many years, Moldova has been increasingly lagging behind even the other states of the region.

Perhaps the result of last week’s snap elections may make the picture a bit clearer:

the pro-West President Maia Sandu’s party achieved a major victory

and has a stable majority, which allows her to form a government without a coalition partner and take the helm of the country (or at least the part that is under Chișinău’s control). As a European, I am happy to see the citizens of a long-hesitating country voting so much confidence to the forces that want to lead them on the European way, adopting European values. I am sending my heartfelt best wishes to Moldova and the newly-forming government, so that they could clear the political sphere from corruption and give Moldova a new direction in terms of foreign affairs.

Nevertheless, I unfortunately don’t see any reason to be highly optimistic:

Moldova’s problems will not disappear overnight.

In order for Moldova to implement the desired changes, we must speak openly and frankly with each other. First of all, we must find a solution for the serious problem of Transnistria. Not only is the status of the breakaway region unclear, it still has Russian peacekeepers stationed in its territory to this day. This fact clearly poses a fundamental obstacle in Moldova’s way to EU integration.

The other major question is Moldova’s relation to its own identity and to Romania. In Europe, we often tend to forget that

a pro-West stance and aggressive nationalism are not always mutually exclusive ideas in the East.

I think it’s important to note that, with all due respect to the national self-identification of Moldovan people, the closer future connections to the West (with Romania in it) must never give way to rampant Chauvinism or lead to any form of forced Romanianization in the multi-ethnic country.

On the other hand, the European Union cannot expect Moldova to solve all its problems on its own. We must help, too, by offering real prospects and real solution strategies for Chișinău, otherwise the general disillusionment will turn the public sentiment against us in the next elections. Both Moldova and the EU will be tested in the upcoming years. I hope we will be successful in our efforts.

Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: How could Hungary and Europe actually get rid of Orbán?