Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist of Donald Trump, told RTL that he will collaborate with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during next year’s run-up to the elections of the European Parliament.
Bannon, a former chairman of the right-wing Breitbart.com website and an architect of Trump’s 2016 election win, has set up a movement to elect right-wing nationalist and populist members in European Parliament elections in May – wrote Reuters.com.
Bannon held a public lecture last May and he mentioned that he had visited Budapest before and even contacted Orbán and his assistants.
This is an interesting fact because the Hungarian government has not made these meetings public. The government spokesman was unable to answer the inevitable questions immediately.
The Movement, Steve Bannon’s group, is welcomed by Orbán; he says it is time that someone from the United States comes to Europe to strengthen conservative thinking, rather than to promote liberal ideals.
“If I could, we would headquarter the movement in Budapest. I love it so much there.
But obviously, it is not practical. We will spend a lot of time in Hungary between now and election day,” Bannon told RTL in an interview published late on Friday.
Orbán, once the campaign leader against Hungary’s Soviet Communist rule is the Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. According to his opponents, he used their parliamentary majority to influence courts, media, and non-government groups in a way that disregards EU laws.
In September, the European Parliament voted about registering sanctions on Hungary. According to the EP, Hungary has disregarded the EU’s laws concerning democracy, civil rights and corruption in an unprecedented manner.
Orbán also led the opposition against Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany because of her notion that Europe must take in more immigrants. Orbán previously said that they are the ‘European People’s Party’.
“Hopefully when we get the Movement fully up and running, we’ll engage,” Bannon told RTL.
Steve Bannon said next year’s European Parliamentary election will bring forth the conflict between those core EU members, who want more assimilation, such as Germany or France, and between the more Eurosceptic nations such as Hungary, who would want to strengthen the member states themselves and create a strong collaboration system between them. We wrote an article about this view previously.
Bannon is said to visit Budapest later this November.
Featured image: www.facebook.com/Steve-Bannon
Source: reuters.com
2 comments
Hungary’s Priorities should be…
1. Replacing Central European University with “Central European Univision”
& 2…Taking the Visegrad 4 out of the 3rd-world Entity known as the “EU”…& into 1st world “EFTA”…with its new HQ in Bratislava.
Steve Bannon is an entertaining Rookie…& if I were VO, I would be careful.
Dear David, why all these remarks? The V4 countries have the courage to stand-up against the Politburo in Brussels.
Mainly thematized in the free media: the UN Migration Pact, which will not be signed by many European countries. However, that is not all. It is completed by a global refugee pact. The United Nations (UN) is planning a new, explosive agreement, as the ‘Daily Mirror’ reports: The ‘Global Compact on Refugees’. The new pact should give millions of people access to better healthcare, among other things. Poor countries that have taken in many refugees should receive international financial assistance to cover the costs. That could, however, again cause a heated debate, such as the ‘Global Compact for Migration’. The UN sees a huge need for action with a view to the globally expanding expulsion crisis. Meanwhile 68.5 million people are on the run. That would be a new record. Often the financial burden would be borne by countries that would have the least resources, the UN High Commissioner, Filippo Grandi said. These burdens should now be distributed ‘more justly’. Grandi hopes after two years of negotiations that the refugee pact will be adopted by the UN General Assembly in New York before Christmas 2018. As a novelty in the history of human signing, it is a matter of legally non-binding by a signature. On 13.11.2018 the refugee pact has taken an important hurdle in the deciding committee of the UN General Assembly. Before the global refugee agreement – not the UN Migration Pact – 176 countries voted. Germany and all other EU countries voted for it. 13 countries stayed away from the vote and 3 countries voted blank. According to expectations, the US rejected the resolution. The pact would be contradictory to the ‘sovereign right’ of the US, declared UN Ambassador Kelley Currie. The American envoy, however, admitted that the US would support much of what the refugee pact provides for. Despite the American restraint, Volker Türk, an attached official to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, sees no reason for pessimism. He would not be discouraged, Türk explained to the ‘Daily Mirror’. He would hope that the US would still change its mind until the closing vote in mid-December 2018 at the UN General Assembly. Also under Donald Trump, the Americans would, after all, provide the largest contribution to the budget of the UNHCR. The UN refugee pact mentions some concrete goals. The world community should especially relieve the countries of absorption. More than 80% of refugees would temporarily stay in poor countries, including Colombia, Kenya and Bangladesh. The agreement lists various aid grants that are necessary: there is amongst others the biometric registration of refugees, but also the separation of those seeking protection from fighters who also penetrate poor countries across the borders. In order to direct the realization of the plan, the UN is starting a ‘global refugee forum’. From 2019, the forum should take place in Geneva once every 4 years, if possible. There, the states must make financial and other commitments. All of that would be based on voluntary. Commitments and contributions would be determined by each country itself, they say. The fraction of the CDU / CSU in the German parliament has not yet commented on the planned refugee pact. In the fact-finding meeting on the Migration Pact, the responsible rapporteurs were only called upon to observe the refugee pact resembling the migration pact and to inform the group in good time of decisions. The question is whether the AfD will also use the refugee pact to warn of an imminent danger. Christoph Matschie of the SPD does not count on this. He would have the impression that the AfD would focus on the Migration Pact because it could be better used for its campaign. In spite of this, the Social Democratic delegate requires better information than the migration pact. Matschie was of the opinion that the German government should inform more offensively. Indeed, the AfD had concentrated on the Migration Compact in recent months. Markus Frohnmaier, former head of the AfD youth organization and AfD politician for development affairs, nevertheless criticized that the German government – just as with the migration pact – would be prepared to agree with the refugee pact without any public debate. Thus the German government would once again violate its obligation to provide information. Frohnmaier fears that the planned refugee resettlement in third countries would mainly concern the richer countries of Europe and North America. A public debate on the UN refugee pact would be absolutely necessary. How the AfD wants to stir up such a debate, Frohnmaier did not say.