Jobbik

Jobbik MEP: Putin’s anti-Europe web is exposed

Marine Le Pen Viktor Orbán
Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi press release: 
 
Being Orbán, Salvini or Le Pen can’t be easy nowadays – not that we feel sorry for them at all. It is now completely clear what Putin’s European lackeys have been working on for years.
 

The invasion of Ukraine marks a clear milestone in history. It has become evident that Russia no longer wishes to abide by the norms that were based on the post-WW2 cooperation or at least co-existence of the world’s countries. The question is not only how far Putin is willing to go with regard to the territories on the east of the EU’s borders. We also need to see how he will try to use his western cronies in this new situation.

The politicians who are closest to the Russian regime, such as Orbán, Salvini and Le Pen, also found themselves in a situation they are quite unaccustomed to.

Operating with relative ease thus far, they have been able to hide their Kremlin-conducted destructive activities behind patriotic slogans and the “Europe of nations” catchphrase. No matter how hard they are trying to re-position themselves however, now everyone clearly sees who and what they are serving.

The other day Matteo Salvini was caught up in an embarrassing situation in Poland, where he went to demonstrate his sudden impulse to help refugees. On his arrival at a border village however, he was met by the local mayor holding up a Putin T-shirt, just like the one Salvini was wearing during his Moscow trip. The ashamed Italian politician had no choice but to stumble away.

Although Viktor Orbán, albeit quite reluctantly, eventually joined in the anti-Russia sanctions, the Hungarian government’s propaganda is so deeply entrenched in its pro-Russia stance that the Prime Minister finds it increasingly difficult to continue his double talk of appearing pro-Europe in the west and pro-Putin at home.

The most fanatic members of his voter base got to the point where they clearly expect him to serve Putin’s system, for which Orbán has no one else to blame but himself. However, while he will probably be able to show his true colours at home, arguing against the anti-Russia sanctions and suggesting that Ukraine’s capitulation would be the best solution, he will have to face the consequences of yet another embarrassing incident in the west.

As revealed by French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s asset declaration, she received a campaign-funding loan of €10.6 million from Hungary’s MKB Bank with ties to Orbán’s strawman, Lőrinc Mészáros. 

t’s hard to believe that a Hungarian bank suddenly found investing into the French far right to be such a great business opportunity that it decided to put so much money into Le Pen’s campaign. In a much more likely scenario, the loan was granted under political pressure, and the origin of the money is hardly in question if you know who have been Le Pen’s greatest sponsors so far…

Considering that France is a somewhat more transparent and democratic country than Hungary, it will probably be more difficult for Le Pen’s defenders to hush up the issue of the money coming via Hungary from, most probably, Russia. 

The only remaining question is what Europe will do to eliminate this web of politicians who are traitors of their own countries and Europe as well.

Opposition: Orbán “Putin’s minion, the last vassal of the aggressor”

Opposition Extraordinary Parliament Session

An extraordinary session of parliament convened by the opposition parties to condemn Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine lacked a quorum on Thursday night, with representatives of the ruling parties staying away.

The session was initiated by representatives of the Democratic Coalition, Jobbik, the Socialist Party, LMP, and Párbeszéd

Bence Tordai of the Párbeszéd party said Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was “still trying to serve Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interests and slow down joint and effective European action”.

“The prime minister loses his real wars as a rule: he lost against the state debt, budget deficit, inflation, a drastic weakening of the forint, and poverty,” he said, adding that Orbán, who normally opted for a fight, was now uncharacteristically promoting “peace and strategic calm” when it came to condemning Putin.

LMP lawmaker Antal Csárdi said the peoples of central and eastern Europe must “speak clearly” when an independent state suffers military aggression. “That obligation especially applies to Hungarians” in view of the crushing of the anti-Soviet revolution of 1956, he said.

László Varju, a deputy of the Democratic Coalition, said that the government had “led the country into a total moral and financial disaster”. The prime minister “is Putin’s minion, the last vassal of the aggressor”, who “has made the EU and NATO distrustful of Hungary”, he said, adding that

Orbán’s policies had led to “record-high public debt and inflation” as well as a fuel shortage at filling stations. “This isn’t strategic calm but the scrabbling about of a headless chicken,” he said.

Ágnes Kunhalmi of the Socialist Party said the parliamentary resolution adopted earlier in the day made it obvious that “Fidesz has so far lied” about the united opposition’s position. “Anyone can see that no political force in Hungary wants to send weapons to Ukraine,” she said. “Hungary’s security depends on NATO rather than on Orbán,” Kunhalmi added.

Jobbik MP Dániel Z. Kárpát said that the absence of government lawmakers at the debate “equals treason” while “Ukrainians and Hungarians or anyone are trying to escape war”. He accused the government of “faffing around” and “idly watching the first signs of an impending global crisis”.

Katalin Novák and PM Orbán
Read also Opposition: new president was “candidate of the corrupt pro-Putin” Orbán

Opposition: new president was “candidate of the corrupt pro-Putin” Orbán

Katalin Novák and PM Orbán

The only way out of Hungary’s “historical dead-end” is via a change of government, the united opposition said after the election of Fidesz’s Katalin Novák as Hungary’s next president by MPs on Thursday, adding that: “Novák will never be the president of all Hungarians.”

Parliament elected the former youth and family affairs minister for a five-year-term with 137 votes out of 188 valid ballots.

The vote’s outcome was a foregone conclusion once Fidesz nominated Novák to replace János Áder, the Democratic Coalition, Jobbik, LMP, Mindenki Magyarországa Mozgalom, Momentum, Socialist and Párbeszéd parties said in a joint statement. Novák, it added, was the

“candidate of the corrupt pro-Putin rule” of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

In his address to parliament, Péter Róna, the opposition’s presidential candidate, said Hungarians wanted to belong to the West, to the EU and NATO “rather than to Putin’s Russia”, it said.

“In the April 3 ballot, two worlds will compete, and it will be United for Hungary that stands for the EU, NATO and for peace,” the statement said.

President Katalin Novák
Read alsoParliament elected the first female president of Hungary! – UPDATED

Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: Three areas where Putin has already lost

Russia flag
Although the Russian offensive is still going on in Ukraine, unfortunately (albeit not at the planned pace), Vladimir Putin has already incurred three major losses, says Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi.

Press release

1. The Ukrainian nation has been born

The Ukrainian nation has been born: after 150 years of the country’s struggle to form a united Ukrainian nation out of three different groups: a Ukrainian-speaking community with a Ukrainian identity; a Russian-speaking community with a Ukrainian identity and the Russian-speaking people with a Russian identity, the efforts finally bore fruit on 24 February. The history of the independent Ukraine may have been dominated by the dilemma whether it should be a united nation-state on the eastern border of the West or a multi-ethnic society on Russia’s western border, but all of that is in the past now. Regardless of their language and religion, the people of Ukraine, when faced with a Russian attack, all became united under the blue-yellow banner. If Putin had any hopes that his troops would be met with a warm welcome and he can make Ukraine his satellite, he was bitterly disappointed. The Ukrainian nation has been born and now it is ready to protect itself while siding with the West instead of Moscow.

2. Europe is united

Europe is united: the European Union, which was the butt of so many jokes for supposedly spending months on debating “the ideal curve of the cucumber”, needed no more than a week to become a united community that is able to assert and represent its interests and values. It has become an alliance that can no longer be undermined by Russian propagandists and the political forces funded by them. It is now a community where even Viktor Orbán will have to keep the line. 

3. Energy carriers can no longer be used for blackmail

Energy carriers can no longer be used for blackmail: if Putin thought he had the upper hand over Europe because the continent’s countries are dependant on Russian fuel, by now he must have realized it was just his wishful thinking. Europe (except for Orbán, who is still talking about his freedom fight for low utility prices even while Ukrainian cities are bombed to the ground) immediately began to eliminate its dependence on Russian energy and find alternatives. In the long run, these efforts may give a huge boost to the use of renewable energies.

There’s nothing good about a war, but these three facts are beyond doubt. Let’s hope Europe will no longer need a series of tragedies to recognize its own opportunities.

Péter Márki-Zay Joint Opposition Prime Ministerial Candidate 2
Read alsoOpposition: Election a choice between East and West, war and peace

Joint opposition: PM “continues to make statements serving Russian interests”

Opposition PM Candidate Péter Márki-Zay

The united opposition wants peace, and considers stopping Russian President Vladimir Putin, strengthening the European defence alliance and “freeing Hungary from Russia’s sphere of interest” as key to that mission, the alliance said on Friday.

Rejecting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s statement that the opposition was “on the side of war”, the Together for Hungary (Együtt Magyarországért) alliance has called on Orbán to “try to mitigate the fallout of war rather than lying, slandering and inciting hatred.”

Read also: PM candidate Márki-Zay: PM Orbán a mercenary and servant of Putin

Orbán’s see-saw politics constitute the greatest risk for Hungary’s security, the statement said. “The prime minister … continues to make statements serving Russian interests, and incites [Hungarians] against NATO and EU which guarantee the country’s security, and against the opposition.”

The statement issued by the Democratic Coalition, LMP, Momentum, the Everyone’s Hungary Movement, the Socialists, Jobbik and Párbeszéd accused Orbán of “trying to live up to the vileness of his role model … Putin.”

Zoltán Kovács government
Read alsoGovernment: ‘Left’s irresponsibility knows no bounds’

Jobbik MEP: Sanctions against Russia, now!

stop war ukraine hungary
 

Press release by Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi Márton:

Ever since World War II, Europe has not seen anything like the ongoing clash in Ukraine, which has a major significance for the outside world, too. Although the Russian intervention has clearly been in the making for a while, the blatantly open large-scale military offensive upset any previous expectations. Europe needs to act.

 

Breaking with all accepted rules, President Vladimir Putin launched an all-out military assault against a sovereign country last week. I am convinced that Europe, if it truly cares about our continent’s peace and democracy, must not leave such a flagrantly uncivilized step unanswered.

Although the Russian aggression has outraged all right-minded people, military action against the Russian army does not seem expedient as we are facing an enormous power. On the other hand, Russia, like so many times in its history, once again has an extremely strong military force coupled with a weak economy. 

This gives the West a great opportunity to subdue the aggressor without having to engage in a military clash.

Unfortunately, the European Union, unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, seems quite hesitant to me when it comes to sanctions that are truly painful for Moscow, despite the fact that Putin’s hinterland is much less united now than it was before. If you had any doubts about that, you could see the evidence when even Putin’s innermost circle, i.e., the members of his government were so reluctant to launch the war against Ukraine.

The information flow is limited, but the Russian people were clearly and seriously upset by the order to wage a war against their neighbours, which gives us a chance to force Putin to stop the aggression if we impose the appropriate measures.

What sanctions am I talking about exactly? First of all, Russia must be excluded from the worldwide interbank financial telecommunication system (SWIFT), and Europe must also impose restrictions directly affecting the family members of the Russian elite. However, the fissures in the Moscow leadership cannot be widened unless Europe takes a united stance.

We must admit there’s a lot of room for improvement in that regard, especially because the table of European leaders still includes such Putin lackeys as Viktor Orbán, who obviously serves Russian interests by undermining Europe’s unity. Europe has arrived at a major milestone: this crisis is neither distant nor regional. It directly affects our lives and the societies we live in.

We mustn’t yield to Putin and we mustn’t yield to his European satellites, either. The sanctions against Russia must be imposed, now.

Military-convoy-Hungary
Read also Orbán: Hungary won’t send weapons, soldiers to war zone

Hungary’s National Election Committee registers three natl party lists

Hungarian Parliament Interior 3

Hungary’s National Election Committee (NVB) registered three national party lists for the April 3 general election at a meeting on Saturday, after the 4pm submission deadline.

The NVB registered the national list of the DK-Jobbik-Momentum-MSZP-LMP-Párbeszéd united opposition parties and the allied ruling Fidesz and Christian Democrats (KDNP), each comprising 279 candidates, and the Two-tailed Dog Party with 58 candidates.

Under Hungary’s election rules, only parties that field at least 71 candidates in at least 14 counties and the capital can put together a national list.

Parties may nominate a maximum of three times as many candidates on their national lists as the number of parliamentary seats that can be won from the votes cast for national lists, which is 93.

The committee already registered the national list of the Mi Hazánk Movement on Wednesday and is set to take a decision on the lists of the Solution Movement (MEMO), the Party for Normal Life and Our Party – IMA at its meeting scheduled for Sunday.

Hungarian voters will elect a 199-member parliament on April 3.

Secretary Zoltán Kovács Nézőpont Institute
Read alsoSecretary condemns NGOs attempting to gain a grip on political decision-making

Joint opposition held demonstration at Russian embassy in Budapest

Budapest Ukraine Russia demonstration

The united opposition held a demonstration in front of the Russian embassy in Budapest under the motto “Against Putin, for Ukraine” late on Thursday. Péter Márki-Zay, the prime ministerial candidate of the united opposition, called on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to drop his “see-saw policy”.

Márki-Zay said Hungary should fully support the European Union’s sanctions against Russia. He also demanded that the government should suspend the licencing procedure of the project to expand the Paks nuclear power plant and expel the International Investment Bank, which he called a “Russian spy bank”.

In addition, the politician called on Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó to return an award recently received “for serving Russian interests”.

“Hungary’s place has been in western Europe, with Christian roots, since King Saint Stephen; the West is our ally, and we are members of NATO and the European Union,”

Márki-Zay said.

Ágnes Vadai, deputy leader of the Democratic Coalition, said that the government “should bear in mind that Hungarians stand for peace and Europe”. LMP co-leader Máté Kanász-Nagy said it was “shameful” that, although the prime minister had condemned the Russian attack, he also voiced support for “continuing business with Putin”. The Paks nuclear power plant upgrade project “should not be revised but dropped”, he insisted.

Socialist co-leader Ágnes Kunhalmi said

both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Orbán were “unreliable”,

and insisted that a government change in Hungary would “benefit the whole of the EU”.

Jobbik deputy leader László Lukács said “Hungarians, Europe, and the sane half of the world support peace and will continue to do so”. Momentum head Anna Donáth slammed Orbán for

“making friends and doing business with eastern dictatorships for 12 years”.

“There will be no unity in Europe as long as Orban is in government,” she added.

Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, co-leader of Párbeszéd, said “we are not protesting against the Russian people but Russia’s dictator”. He accused the Hungarian prime minister of “contributing to the oiling of the power machinery now occupying Ukraine for the past 12 years”. “The Orbán government is not a tool for peace in Europe but an obstacle,” Karacsony said.

Budapest Ukraine Russia demonstration
Read also Joint opposition held demonstration at Russian embassy in Budapest

MEP Gyöngyösi comments on the CJEU’s ruling

European Union Hungary Flag

Press release

Reaching its verdict last week, the European Court of Justice determined that the rule of law mechanism is compatible with EU law. Justice prevails – one could say, if we didn’t have to wait a year just to state something so obvious or if the European Commission wasn’t playing for time once again. All of this is now undermining the legitimacy of the EU as a democratic community… – press release by MEP Márton Gyöngyösi.

 

For many years now, the Polish and especially the Hungarian government have been ruffling lots of feathers in Europe by repeatedly questioning the EU’s fundamental democratic values while happily spending EU monies without proper safeguards (mainly in Hungary). Built on the good-faith cooperation among member states, an astounded EU has long been watching helplessly how these countries conducted their affairs.

Just as Warsaw and Budapest were turning more and more clearly against their own allies and making ever more distinct efforts to undermine the stability of the community, more and more European politicians hardened their resolve to do something about it. 

Consequently, the rule of law mechanism was devised and introduced in January 2021. However, the Hungarian and the Polish government immediately turned to the CJEU in order to put off the implementation of the mechanism in a financially sensitive period. This move was vital for Viktor Orbán, especially because of the upcoming Hungarian elections.

What happened afterwards however, has unveiled the backdoor deals and democratic deficit that have been paralysing the European Union to this day. While Orbán and the Polish government were clearly making a fool of Europe and they had zero intentions to comply with any norms whatsoever, although they were more than happy to spend the money, the European Court of Justice took its sweet time to finally determine that the rule of law mechanism can be applied. In the meantime, Budapest and Warsaw kept conducting their usual practices.

All over Europe, the ruling was welcomed by many because they felt justice was served and hoped this long, dragged-out affair could finally be brought to an end, thus allowing for the punishment of those who trample upon the rule of law.

However, it might not happen quite so easily, since the European Commission’s first reaction to the ruling was that they would examine it, while EC President Ursula von der Leyen didn’t even show up for the European Parliament’s debate on the rule of law mechanism. I believe her absence is a tell-tale sign, to say the least.

Unfortunately, we must conclude that the express intent of the majority of MEPs, who got their mandates from the citizens of the EU, has been purposely and repeatedly blocked by the much more powerful European Commission, the members of which were appointed to their posts through backdoor deals and therefore have much less democratic legitimacy. These actions lead to increasing tensions that may ultimately undermine European democracy.

If, instead of serving the people of Europe, the Commission continues to silently take sides with certain member state governments despite their rule of law violations, one begins to wonder: do the other EU institutions believe in European democracy the way we do in the European Parliament?

Viktor Orbán Election Campaign Speech Part 3
Read alsoEU court ruling against PM Orbán’s “toxic populist brand”?

EU court ruling against PM Orbán’s “toxic populist brand”?

Viktor Orbán Election Campaign Speech Part 3

A Wednesday ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union has provided a new tool to protect the community’s budget and to ensure that taxpayers’ money goes where it is intended, Johannes Hahn, EU commissioner for budget and administration, told a plenary of the European Parliament on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, the CJEU ruled that the regulation accepted by the European Parliament and Council on making EU funding conditional on adhering to principles of the rule of law was built on a sound legal footing, rejecting actions brought against the regulation by Hungary and Poland.

Hahn said the European Commission was analysing the ruling and would soon start implementing the regulation.

Balázs Hidvéghi, MEP of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz, said the decision was “leading to a dead end” and insisted that it was a “historic mistake to use European cooperation to aggressively spread an ideology”. He suggested that the EU was “abusing its power to force each state into a leftist straightjacket”. He voiced regret that “a theoretically independent European court has become partner in building a federalist, centralist Europe”.

Hungary and Poland will “insist on a policy of common sense”, he said, adding that “we will protect our borders, we will protect our children, we will protect our way of life”, he said.

Katalin Cseh, MEP of opposition Momentum, said that while “the Hungarian government interprets the European court’s decision as Brussels’s punishment for the child protection law”, the ruling “in fact has nothing to do with the homophobic Hungarian law just as the latter does not have anything to do with child protection”. She added that the ruling was aimed against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s

“toxic populist brand”.

Cseh raised concern about the European Commission’s “delaying” its guidelines on applying the rule of law mechanism, and called on the body to “immediately” start its application.

Jobbik MEP Márton Gyöngyösi slammed the Hungarian government for “suggesting a connection between the LGBTI lobby and the Soros organisations” and voiced discontent over the EC’s “reluctance” to apply the regulation.

Armed forces Ukraine soldier
Read alsoWhat would the Hungarian armed forces do if Russia attacked Ukraine?

MEP Gyöngyösi: Pegasus affair reloaded

internet
 

Jobbik deputy leader and MEP Márton Gyöngyösi said in a press release, breaking out last summer, the Pegasus-scandal revealed that several countries had been conducting illicit surveillance operations with highly questionable legitimacy, by using an Israeli-developed spyware called Pegasus. The scandal has not subsided ever since, as there are now serious questions raised in connection with the company that sells Pegasus, too. We have just learned recently that Pegasus was even used in Israel for surveillance operations with highly questionable justification. On the whole, the Hungarian events still appear to be the most concerning. The European Parliament is soon going to investigate the matter.

Press release

 

Why Hungary again? Well, if you want an explanation, you need to go back in time to the summer of 2021. That was when it turned out that the Hungarian government bought the Pegasus spyware that had mainly been preferred by authoritarian regimes due to “its efficient operation”, while the seller company was not picky when it came to who they were selling the technology to.

Other European governments came under suspicion too, but while the Pegasus affair had some consequences in most of the democratic countries, there were no legal ramifications in Hungary at all.

For quite a while, Hungary’s government tried to keep it under wraps whether they used the software at all. When it was no longer possible to deny that they relied on it to monitor mainly opposition journalists, civil activists and sometimes even simple citizens, Justice Minister Judit Varga claimed that it was all done lawfully. It might as well have been true, since Hungary’s legal regulations on clandestine surveillance activities are quite lenient in international comparison. Consequently, even if it is not against the Hungarian regulations, it’s still not very reassuring when Hungary’s justice minister “lawfully” points at a name and orders the person to be put under surveillance.

As it turned out however, even that very thin legitimacy did not apply to the case, since Justice Minister Judit Varga “outsourced” the industrial-scale surveillance activities (we’re talking about ordering the wire-tapping of seven people per day on average) to her deputy, Pál Völner. 

At first glance, the fact that most orders were signed by Völner seems no more than a malignant shirking of responsibility and circumvention of the law. However, if you consider that Pál Völner has become a suspect in a criminal conspiracy case of passive corruption, i.e., the bribery of an official, you can assume he is not a man of impeccable integrity, but quite likely a heavy-weight political criminal who, by the way, controlled the surveillance of opposition figures.

Despite all the above problems and the serious charges against him, Völner is still at large, while the investigation reluctantly launched by Attila Péterfalvi, the head of the authority responsible for the protection of Hungarian citizens’ data, failed to achieve any real results, since it only looked into the formal aspects of the surveillance operations, and even the few actual findings were classified for decades. This is how things go on in a hybrid regime…

While the Orbán government and Justice Minister Judit Varga (who is still in office to this day despite the scandalous events) keep parroting conspiracy theories and lashing out against Brussels, the European Union seems to have had enough of these incidents. 

As a result, last autumn’s EP debate has been followed by a LIBE (Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs) hearing as well as a report released by the INGE committee specialized on foreign interference and disinformation in the EU. Based on an EPP initiative, the European Parliament will soon set up an inquiry committee to investigate governmental abuses of Pegasus and other spyware.

The body will also make recommendations to develop a legal framework in order to prevent people from being placed under surveillance for political reasons ever again in Europe.

My colleagues and I are probably not mistaken when we predict that Viktor Orbán will present these efforts as an attack on member state sovereignty. Let us hope that after the April elections his harangues will not come from a governmental position, but from, for example, the defendants’ stand where any decision maker belongs who orders unlawful surveillance operations.

Opposition pledges to curb public debt, inflation, corruption

Opposition press conference

The joint opposition alliance has pledged to curb public debt, inflation and corruption if it comes to power after the April 3 election. Addressing a joint press conference on Thursday, Jobbik vice-president Dániel Kárpát Z said “not only corruption is brutal”, public debt and its interests had also doubled since 2010. “Every single Hungarian spends 140,000 forints [EUR 396] a year on interests alone,” he said.

“The government’s hapless economic policy, bad debt management and the brutal corruption rate are suffocating the national economy,” he said.

Jácint Horváth of the Democratic Coalition called for steps “regarding the fortunes obviously gained by corruption over the past 12 years.” Property that has been clearly acquired through corruption should be seized, he said.

Zoltán Vajda of the Socialists said the central bank’s “totally discredited monetary policy had cost it the market’s trust”.

Inflation has skyrocketed, despite the bank’s efforts to fight it by raising interest,

he said. Meanwhile, the central bank should finance its losses “from the monies it had outsourced to foundations”, he said.

Ruling Fidesz said in reaction that while the public debt had grown under the previous left-wing government, the current cabinet had set it on a downward trajectory.

“This is the same left that nearly doubled the public debt and sent it on a steep rise when it was in power,” the party said in a statement. Under Ferenc Gyurcsány’s premiership, the left crippled the country, pushed it to the brink of bankruptcy and they would not even have been able to pay out pensions, family subsidies or wages without a loan from the IMF and other expensive foreign currency-denominated loans, Fidesz said.

The alliance of Fidesz and the Christian Democrats, on the other hand, stabilised the country’s finances, set the economy on an upward and the public debt on a downward trajectory and paid back the loans taken up by the left, it added.

“The ones who now want to come back into power on the left are the same people who already led the country into ruin once,”

Fidesz said. “Hungary must move forward, not backwards.”

Opposition roundtable
Read also If the opposition wins, Hungary will have euro by 2027 – UPDATED

Hungarian Christian Democrats: Europe should be closer to its citizens

European Commission

Hajnalka Juhász, deputy leader of Hungary’s co-ruling Christian Democrats, called for “a Europe which is closer to its citizens and represents them equally” in her online contribution to a conference held in the European Parliament on the future of the community, late on Wednesday.

Juhász noted that the European Union had been set up on a voluntary basis, with the members making a decision to exercise certain powers jointly. “Joining the EU cannot mean that the legal order of members should be dissolved in a common, European system; it is important that the constitutional identity of member states should be maintained for the future,” she said.

Zoltán Balczó, MP of opposition Jobbik, said that a planned system of voting on transnational lists “would not bring the EU closer to European citizens”. He insisted that the lists would “contain names most of which are unknown to voters”.

Euro
Read alsoEuro or forint? Here is what Hungarians think

Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi: This is how the illiberal party family failed to be formed again

orbán morawiecki
Jobbik deputy leader and MEP Márton Gyöngyösi said in a press release, travelling to Spain’s capital this time, Europe’s far-right, nationalist and illiberal forces gathered for their umpteenth attempt to form – something. Although the number of participants may suggest that a new party family was supposed to be born, the Madrid summit revealed something entirely different: it showed how these leaders, who keep going on and on about order and national confidence in their own homelands, become so clumsy when it comes to forming an actual organization.
 

Press release

Gyöngyösi said, the difficulty of trying to coordinate the far-right section of Europe’s political spectrum is clearly demonstrated by the confusion around the declaration adopted by the Madrid meeting: according to the first news, the parties even seemed to have agreed on condemning Moscow’s aggressive actions. ‘Did Le Pen and Orbán really sign something like this?’ you could hear the surprised reactions, but it soon turned out nothing like that happened, of course. Although the Madrid summit condemned Brussels, it did not condemn Moscow. ‘Morawiecki didn’t even condemn Moscow?’ asked many others who primarily viewed the grand far-right project from the aspect of Polish politics. Indeed, the diverse responses clearly show how little these forces have in common other than a few eloquent political slogans or their aversion to democracy and the rule of law.

There is no real surprise here: how could Russia-funded Le Pen cooperate in the international arena with such figures as Orbán, who shakes the hands of post-Soviet dictators, Morawiecki, who has a visceral antipathy towards Russians or the hardly pro-Russia Conservative People’s Party of Estonia?

How could Georgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini, who have been engaged in a fierce struggle for positions in Italy, suddenly come to an agreement for the sake of international affairs? How could Spain’s VOX, which strongly opposes regional national autonomy, come to terms with the separatist Vlaams Belang? (Fun fact: the event’s organizers raised the Belgian flag to honour the Flemish nationalists, something they feel no loyalty for at all.) And which of the participants would be ready to acknowledge their friendship with Germany’s AfD, thus openly declaring war on Berlin?

Perhaps the Romanians would offer the easiest challenge for this confounded company: for example, the Romanian participant, who currently strengthens the lines of the National Peasants’ Party, was able to successfully cooperate with the post-Communist Romanian social democrats when it came to his own parliamentary seat.

He’s likely to manage with others, too. On the other hand, what do you make of George Simion, a former football ultra and now Chauvinist and anti-Hungarian AUR party leader, who happily posted his attendance of the event and made a selfie with MEP Jorge Buxadé there? Surprisingly enough, the organizers claimed Simion was never invited, and even if he was, he was never allowed to enter, and even if he may have been allowed to enter, he was promptly thrown out. Either way, he still had the opportunity and the time to post a selfie and a tweet.

We expected better security from the “guardians of European culture”…

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán talks with Marine Le Pen
Read alsoPM Orbán met with Marine Le Pen to discuss EU conservative cooperation

PM Orbán Putin’s Trojan horse in Europe?

Putin Russian president Viktor Orbán

Two politicians of the united opposition called on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday to reveal his position in connection with ruling Fidesz’s “new ally” which they branded a “Hungarian-hating” party from Romania.

Jobbik deputy leader and MEP Márton Gyöngyösi said Orbán was “working towards entering a new coalition with Europe’s extremist and far-right forces”. He accused Orbán of carrying out Russian “President Vladimir Putin’s plan to weaken the European Union”. The Jobbik politician said French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s election campaign was being financed by a Hungarian bank instead of “the Russians”,

proving that Orbán was “Putin’s Trojan horse in Europe”.

Gyöngyösi said the latest meeting of this political grouping was attended by representatives of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), a party “well known for its

hatred of Hungarians”.

This, he said, showed that in an effort to cement his power, Orbán was “ready to join forces with people that are not only destroying Europe but also dividing the Hungarian nation.”

Jobbik politician Attila Fazakas, the united opposition’s policy expert on Hungarian communities abroad, said the favourite slogan of AUR’s leader was: “Rid the country of Hungarians!” He also said another AUR politician “gets his kicks from”

submitting complaints against ethnic Hungarian-led local governments for displaying the Szekler flat or for publishing official gazettes in Hungarian in localities with all-Hungarian residents.

Balázs Hídvéghi, an MEP of Fidesz, said that Gyöngyösi was “lying” and insisted that AUR had not even been invited to the Madrid meeting, and when its leader turned up,

“he was thrown out by the security guards”.

“Naturally, the idea of meeting him had not even occurred to Viktor Orbán,” he added.

Veszprém
Read alsoHungarian City of Queens to become European Capital of Culture?

If the opposition wins, Hungary will have euro by 2027 – UPDATED

Opposition roundtable

Parties of the united opposition presented their ideas concerning a possible introduction of the euro, taxes, inflation, job creation and budget management at a roundtable organised by the Civitas Institute on Thursday.

Párbeszéd MP Tamás Mellár said the opposition’s plans to introduce the European common currency were “very good”, but added that the programme would take at least five years to complete. Hungary could not at present meet the Maastricht criteria for the introduction of the euro, but aspirants are expected to present a “credible programme” outlining a schedule, he said. Mellar insisted that the current policy of currency devaluation could not be maintained and suggested that the exchange rate of the forint should be kept within “a very narrow” band.

Democratic Coalition MP László Varjú added that “there has been no political will” to join the euro zone in the past ten years despite “there being opportunities”.

LMP’s Antal Csárdi called for a graded personal income tax to replace the single bracket system, adding that minimum wages should be exempt from tax.

Participants in the roundtable also agreed that the VAT system should be changed, and said it was “not without precedent” in Europe to have multiple VAT brackets. Dániel Z. Kárpát of Jobbik said Hungary had the highest VAT rate in Europe on products for children.

Zoltán Vajda, representing the Socialist Party and the Everybody’s Hungary Movement, said the central bank’s policies were “irresponsible”, and criticised the bank’s purchases of government securities and its foundations. He insisted that the central bank’s continual base rate hikes were ineffective and failed to strengthen the national currency.

Márton Ilyés of the Momentum party said that a labour shortage in the country was the result of increasing emigration, with special regard to the health, construction, and farming sectors. He criticised the government for “wasting exorbitant funds” on “attracting companies to Hungary offering similar types of jobs” rather than making efforts to create increasingly higher quality jobs.

In another development Varjú called the 2022 budget “impracticable” and called for a new one. He insisted that transparency of the budget was a pillar of the rule of law. He also called for health services to be made free of charge.

UPDATE – Fidesz’s reaction

Ruling Fidesz said in response that former prime ministers Ferenc Gyurcsány and Gordon Bajnai,

“the same people who already destroyed the country once and ran it according to the financial interests of foreign speculators”,

were still in charge of Hungarian left-wing economic policy.

“Under successive left-wing governments, Hungary gave up its economic and financial sovereignty, allowed multinationals and speculators to make out-sized profits at the expense of the Hungarian people and Hungarian businesses, created mass unemployment, and heavily taxed the economy and wages.”

Fidesz added the left wing and its prime ministerial candidate were planning to impose on Hungary the same ill-fated economic policy it had already pursued while winding up the current tax regime “which ensures Hungarian businesses the lowest tax in Europe and Hungarian workers the third lowest”, it added.

Shop Hungary
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MEP Gyöngyösi: Does Orbán have a Trojan horse in the Commission?

European Union Flage

Press release – Remarks of Jobbik MEP Gyöngyösi

Ever since his appointment, Hungarian Neighbourhood and Enlargement Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi’s work has been surrounded with a certain amount of suspicion, which should come as no surprise considering Várhelyi’s professional record and the circumstances of his nomination. Now the suspicion is stronger than ever that the Commissioner, instead of representing the EC’s and the EU’s interests, is busy building Viktor Orbán’s Balkans support system.

 

Beside the recent letter sent by thirty MEPs to EC President Ursula von der Leyen asking her to investigate Várhelyi’s work as the Commissioner for enlargement, the Hungarian-nominated politician’s activity has always been surrounded with the suspicion that he might not be worthy of his office. From a certain point of view, Várhelyi’s appointment was a surprise, because the Hungarian government had originally nominated former Justice Minister and current Fidesz MEP László Trócsányi as a candidate for the EC.

However, Trócsányi failed to go through even the first hearing, since, beside his highly suspicious role as a justice minister in dismantling the rule of law in Hungary, he was finally rejected due to a conflict of interest issue.

That’s how Olivér Várhelyi got into the picture. As the head of Hungary’s permanent representation in Brussels, he had already been rather infamous for his boorish and aggressive style coupled with an utter disregard for non-partisanship in public service and openly acting as a party activist conveying Fidesz’s political messages even in his official capacity.

No wonder so few people were hopeful that Várhelyi, who had already failed to adopt a non-partisan stance even when he was representing his own country’s government, would be able to serve the EU’s interests instead of Viktor Orbán’s. Suspicions rose even higher when Várhelyi eventually got the enlargement commissioner’s post so coveted by Orbán.

The Balkans are outstandingly important for Orbán, of course, not because he is so committed to the European cause, but because he abuses Hungary’s EU membership and relative economic power compared to the Balkans countries so that Orbán’s circle could colonize the region both economically and politically. 

This means that Orbán exports his own system to the countries that are supposed to adopt European political norms so they could join the community. Instead of helping them to achieve this goal however, the Hungarian government launches an all-out attack on the independent media of the Balkan states or smuggles their corrupt Prime Ministers across the border in spy movie fashion to let them escape their prison sentence, like he did with the now carefree Budapest resident Nikola Gruevski.

Olivér Várhelyi seems to be a good Orbán asset for this activity, as he favours the Orbán-backed Albania over North Macedonia that is led by a government not to Orbán’s liking. 

Most recently however, Várhelyi seems to have gone even further: he is suspected to have conducted double negotiations with Bosnia-Herzegovina’s leaders. After presenting the European requirements in the official meeting, he invited the Bosnian Serb leaders to a closed session where he urged them to keep up their separatist efforts. This idea very neatly corresponds to Orbán’s current movements in the Balkans, since the Hungarian premier has long been actively supporting Bosnian Serb Milorad Dodik, who is widely considered as one of Europe’s most unacceptable politicians and Russia’s Trojan horse. Dodik even caused a diplomatic scandal recently when he made Chauvinistic remarks on Bosnian Muslims.

The question is how long the EU will tolerate a Commissioner who, instead of representing the European interests that he pledged to, plays a double game to carry out Viktor Orbán’s plans supporting Russia’s destabilization efforts in a region whose security, peace and integration is crucial for Europe.

No answer from the Commission yet…

france
Read alsoMEP Gyöngyösi: The stakes of the French presidency, i.e., can a sovereign community be fragmented?

MEP Gyöngyösi: The stakes of the French presidency, i.e., can a sovereign community be fragmented?

france
Beginning this month, the French EU presidency features quite a few significant and relevant items on its list of priorities; the most fundamental and strategically important one being the chapter on the agenda for a sovereign Europe, in my opinion. The French efforts are clear and relatable – the question is: how far can they be implemented in reality?

Few other big European countries are quite as dedicated as France to deepening the European integration. The country has been spearheading these efforts ever since the establishment of the European community and, as far as the agenda points are concerned, this French presidency is no exception. People who are concerned about Europe and willing to do something for it clearly understand that the European Union is currently such a fragmented community that is unable to utilize its potential, both externally and internally. While the EU is marred by constant rule-of-law disputes to the point where certain western politicians would rather create a two-speed Europe just to “escape from” the eastern autocrats, Viktor Orbán and some other politicians are getting busy undermining Europe’s integrity.

Due to the internal disputes and the difficulties of unanimous decision-making, Europe is simply unable to have a say in geopolitical events appropriately to its real weight.

That’s why so many people are keeping an eye out for the French presidency in the hope that the sovereignty agenda becomes more than just words written on paper. Will we be able to stand up for the rule of law, break the momentum of the eastern autocrats and make them respect our common values?

Will we be able to reinforce the common European foreign policy, primarily by stepping away from the unanimous decision-making process that has been increasingly abused by Europe’s political “trolls”?

As a European citizen and MEP, I hope Paris will find the appropriate answers to the challenges, not least because Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign may greatly depend on him being able to show force and act accordingly. As far as the struggle against autocrats is concerned, I think it’s important to note that the outcome of the upcoming Hungarian elections may also depend on whether Viktor Orbán, who is going to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin right in the middle of the campaign, is met with compassion or rejection in Europe.

There’s one thing we can safely state: the situation can’t be kept up like this much longer. 

Europe mustn’t remain a divergent community and fall victim to its own indecisiveness. I hope the next six months will answer many of these questions.

Hungary opposition press conference
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