Tag Archives: Manfred Weber

After 21 years, a bad marriage between EPP and Fidesz ends in divorce

Two weeks ago, I stuck my neck out in my post titled “EPP and Fidesz: A Parting of the Ways,”  with no question mark at the end, and predicted that “we are finally in the end game, which will result in the probable expulsion or the voluntary departure of Fidesz from the European People’s Party.” Among Hungary-watchers, few people shared my optimism because they were thoroughly disgusted by the years of indecision over Fidesz membership in EPP. If, after the suspension of Fidesz two years ago, EPP members were unable to come to a decision about the fate of the party, these people argued, why should the situation be different this time?

I perfectly understand the general skepticism that surrounded the EPP-Fidesz “soap opera,” as Florian Eder of Politico called it, but, beginning in mid-December 2020, I saw signs of serious trouble awaiting Fidesz in EPP. For me, perhaps one of the clearest indications was the rumor that László Trócsányi, former minister of justice and now a Fidesz MEP, threatened to take the EPP group to the European Court of Justice. If true, I said to myself, and, given Trócsányi’s modus operandi I believed the story to be true, EPP means business this time.

Before the final break this morning, István Szent-Iványi, a former member of parliament, political undersecretary in the ministry of foreign affairs, and later a member of the European Parliament, who is a foreign policy analyst nowadays, was one of the few who shared my view about the forthcoming departure of Fidesz from EPP, a judgment based on “the deteriorating external factors for the Hungarian government and Viktor Orbán.”

Katalin Novák announced Viktor Orbán’s decision to take Fidesz out of the EPP delegation. She explained that Fidesz cannot allow their democratically elected representatives to be constrained and declared that Fidesz’s departure would be EPP’s loss. “All this happened in the bubble of Brussels where it was not the leaders of the individual parties who made the decision but their representatives to the European Parliament.” According to Novák, the greatest loss for EPP will be the absence of “critical voices” that Fidesz representatives provided. Surely, Novák in her more honest moments cannot seriously think that EPP members will be heartbroken over their cantankerous Fidesz colleagues’ departure. More typical was the Twitter comment by Roza Tun, a Polish MEP, who wrote, “Adieu, Fidesz! I will not cry.”

It seems that Orbán sent his female contingent, all two of them, onto the battlefield because, after Novák’s announcement, Judit Varga offered her two cents’ worth of wisdom on the pages of Magyar Nemzet. She explained to “Herr Weber” that this was all his fault because, instead of keeping the EPP delegation tight and united, under his tenure he weakened it. Well, perhaps, but the EPP delegation was united in its decision to ease the Fidesz members out of its parliamentary delegation. Of the 160 members present, 148 voted for the resolution, knowing full well its consequences.

The party and the government are trying to spin this latest development as a success story. Zsolt Bayer was naturally on hand with an opinion piece titled “So, at last it’s over!” He is thrilled because “at last this is the end of bloodcurdling waffling that has never made any sense other than to satisfy those who cannot and should not be satisfied. We came to the end of unprincipled bargains and compromises that led nowhere. We came to the end of the humiliating petty work to gratify that miserable Weber.”

Tamás Pilhál of Pesti Srácok is also thrilled and wishes EPP “further success in sinking into imbecility.” According to him, EPP is a latrine in which “Manfred Weber and the other invertebrate crawlers may continue to hiss in the dark, but the door of the outhouse was slammed shut on them. Hungarian MEPs and Hungary can finally breathe fresh air.”

Independent commentators view the Fidesz departure quite differently. Péter Balázs, foreign minister in the Bajnai government, sees these latest developments as the clear failure of Orbán’s goals, which were far too ambitious and were therefore doomed to failure. He wanted to reshape EPP to resemble his own right-wing ideology, but he couldn’t find willing partners. Balázs points out something that Orbán may not have included in his calculus. EPP needed the Fidesz contingent when there was a grand coalition between the socialists and the Christian democrats. But after these two parties failed to get a majority in the European Parliament in 2019, the size of the EPP delegation was no longer of critical importance. EPP even without Fidesz is the largest caucus, and the Fidesz 13 would not enable them to wield even more power.

Given the complicated structure of the organizations of the European Union, initially there was quite a bit of confusion in the media about the exact nature of Orbán’s unilateral withdrawal of the 13 Fidesz MEPs from EPP. It took a couple of hours before people began to understand that Fidesz is not at this stage quitting EPP but is only removing its representatives from the EPP delegation. The next move, however, will have to be either the expulsion or the voluntary withdrawal of Fidesz from EPP because otherwise the Fidesz MEPs cannot join another parliamentary delegation. And surely, they don’t want to function for too long as independent MEPs. Moreover, it looks as if the European People’s Party, quite independently from Fidesz, has already started a procedure to remove Fidesz from the party. EPP released a statement today saying that “Fidesz is now facing an exclusion procedure from the party, under Article 3 of the EPP Statutes. This must be decided by the EPP Political Assembly, which will meet when it is safe to do so given the current pandemic situation.” Looking at Article 3, I assume that Fidesz’s removal would be based on the passage in Article 3 which claims that the purpose of the association is to “encourage and organize unanimous action by its members at a European level.” If Fidesz members are no longer part of the parliamentary delegation, they can’t contribute to unanimous action by EPP members.

In this post I have barely scratched the surface of the breakup of the 21-year “marriage” between Fidesz and EPP. In 2000, EPP made a concerted effort to woo Fidesz, although one could already detect serious differences between the views of Fidesz and those of the Christian Democratic parties on politics, economics, and culture. Over the years the gap between them only widened, until it finally had to be obvious to everyone concerned that Fidesz is a far-right party, which shouldn’t have a place in EPP. In the next couple of days, I hope to delve deeper into past EPP-Fidesz relations as well as Fidesz’s prospects outside of the “Christian Democratic family” and what kinds of effects Orbán’s decision will have on Hungary’s standing within the European Union.

March 3, 2021

EPP and Fidesz: A parting of the ways

It seems that we are finally in the end game, which will result in the probable expulsion or the voluntary departure of Fidesz from the European People’s Party. A good indication of just how long the process has been going on is that, since April 2008, I have collected over 800 articles in various languages about EPP’s reluctance to break its relation with a party that has nothing whatsoever to do with either Christianity or democracy. The move is long overdue, but it looks as if we are finally getting somewhere. There is a good possibility that Fidesz will soon join either the far-right Identity and Democracy Party, where the parties of Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini have large contingents, or the European Conservatives and Reformist Party, where Viktor Orbán’s Polish friends found a home.

If I had to date the beginning of serious efforts within EPP to put an end to Orbán’s games, I would choose December 18, 2020, when “the EPP Presidency adopted a decision to launch a procedure in January 2021 for the review of the EPP Group Rules of Procedure to enable the termination of members of a group of Members rather than individual Members.” It promised to conclude the procedure by the end of February. EPP, perhaps for the first time in its existence, may actually be delivering on its promise.

The decision of the presidency was implemented on January 12, 2021 and immediately reported by Politico. About a month later, on February 16, 444 received reliable information about the changes the five-member committee recommended that would enable EPP to get rid of Fidesz altogether. The word was that most of the committee’s proposals would receive majority support, although there were still some points that needed to be clarified. Although Florian Eder in Politico’s “Brussels Playbook” called the EPP-Fidesz saga a “soap opera” and predicted that the new rules would actually be useful to Fidesz, the Fidesz leadership must have heard a different story because Magyar Nemzet tried to calm nerves by claiming that “not everybody in EPP supports the new procedural rules.”

In another telling sign that Fidesz’s position in EPP is more than shaky, Florian Eder reported on February 26 that “at a meeting of [select] EPP MEPs on planned changes to the rules for excluding or suspending members and delegations MEP László Trócsányi threatened to take the EPP group to the European Court of Justice.” At that meeting the die was cast because Katalin Halmai, the well-informed correspondent of Népszava, learned that the proposed new rules of procedure passed with “a wide majority.” D-Day is this coming Wednesday.

The EPP committee came up with a clever way to expel individual Fidesz members. Although normally a two-thirds majority is needed for expulsion, that is not the case if a member’s national party has already been excluded or suspended. That is, Fidesz MEPs could be expelled or suspended by a simple majority vote.

At this point Viktor Orbán threatened Manfred Weber with Fidesz’s voluntary departure from EPP if the membership accepts the rules of procedure on Wednesday, March 3. Admittedly, it is difficult to call the contents of this letter a threat. I’m sure that Manfred Weber and many members of EPP would be delighted if Fidesz left the European People’s Party voluntarily.

From Orbán’s letter, dated today, it becomes clear that Weber never bothered to answer Orbán’s December 6 letter, which I also published on Hungarian Spectrum. In this new letter Orbán first complains that, in such trying times, EPP is busying itself with such trivial matters as changing procedural regulations at the expense of Fidesz. What he finds absolutely unacceptable is that “these amendments were tailor made to sanction Fidesz MEPs. … As president of Fidesz , it is my obligation to guarantee the full representation of our voters. Therefore, I cannot accept limiting the rights of our MEPs to fulfill their duties.” Finally, he announced that “if the provisions accepted at the meeting of the Presidency and of Head of national delegations on February 26 are put to a vote and adopted, Fidesz will leave the Group.”

Katalin Novák, who was given the job a couple of years ago of managing Fidesz-EPP relations, published Orbán’s English-language letter to Weber on Twitter. On her own Facebook page she posted a Hungarian version along with her own Hungarian-language commentary. It offered no new information, except to say that as “the strongest party” within EPP “we do not stand idly by as the center-right is destroying itself.” And what will they do instead? Leave?

According to an article that appeared in Euractiv yesterday, Viktor Orbán wrote a letter to Giorgia Meloni, the leader of Brothers of Italy, who also happens to be president of the European Conservatives and Reformist Party. The two are old friends and comrades in their right-wing nationalist politics. A few years ago, Meloni visited Orbán, a visit which he returned in September 2019 where he was greeted as a hero. After giving a fiery speech, he announced that “he stands somewhat to the right” of Meloni, whose party is considered to be post-fascist. A party is called post-fascist if it espouses a modified form of fascism and partakes in constitutional politics. Orbán called for cooperation between Fidesz and Brothers of Italy.

Only a couple of weeks ago Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, succeeded in forming a “national unity government” that is tasked with handling Italy’s present crisis with the assistance of Brussels and Washington. With one exception, all Italian parties, even Lega of Matteo Salvini, joined Draghi’s government. The sole holdout was Georgia Meloni.

Orbán’s letter can be considered a letter of support for Meloni’s decision to remain in opposition. As he said, “after spending sixteen years in opposition, I have learnt that victory is never final and defeat is never fatal. Only one thing counts: whether we are ready to continue the fight.’’ He expressed his hope that “cooperation between Fidesz and the Brothers of Italy will continue in the future and that we will be able to maintain our friendly relations based on the policy of common sense, on Christian and conservative values.”

Whether this letter has something to do with Fidesz’s presumed exit from EPP or simply reflects Orbán’s unhappiness over Matteo Salvini’s participation in the unity government is hard to tell. The only hint might be that the Hungarian government media are quite interested in Italian developments, with an emphasis on the assumed strengthening of the right with the formation of Draghi’s unity government. Apparently, the Brothers of Italy party is gaining support. Orbán likes to be in the thick of things, but, given his other troubles, he would be better off leaving Italian politics alone.

February 28, 2021

Awaiting a new era in U.S.-Hungarian relations

Yesterday afternoon, János Avar, a keen commentator on U.S. politics, with years of experience as the Magyar Nemzet correspondent in Washington (back when Magyar Nemzet was best newspaper in Hungary), published an opinion piece in Hírklikk titled “Are we declaring war on the United States?” He wrote that it looked “as if Orbán’s media workers were competing with one another about which one of them can utter nastier and ruder remarks about the forthcoming Biden administration and which one of them can express greater horror over the situation in the United States which exists, for the most part, in their imagination…. Why is Viktor Orbán determined to become Donald Trump’s last henchman?”

I wouldn’t be surprised if Avar had in mind an Ádám Topolánszky piece, which appeared in Magyar Nemzet the day before, when composing his op-ed piece. In it, Topolánszky, presumably writing from Florida, insists that with the Biden presidency an Orwellian dystopia will arrive in the United States. We will witness lies, scaremongering, and punishment. In this new world, the Democratic Party will be Big Brother; the media, the FBI, and the big tech companies will be the Thought Police, who will all speak the artificial language Newspeak. All that horror will be directed from the White House under the effective supervision of Vice President Kamala Harris, while President Biden will be nothing more than “a visual element.” Patriotism will be the “casus belli” in this new world, which will be under “centralized communicational and cultural dictatorship.”

Today, at last, Viktor Orbán sent a note to The Honorable Mr. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. in which he congratulated the 46th president of the United States and sent his best wishes on the occasion of his inauguration. But then Orbán went on to laud “the past four years, [which] have proved that friendly and mutually beneficial cooperation between the USA and Hungary holds great potential in many areas” and expressed his hope that these fruitful relations will continue because “the Hungarian Government remains fully committed to further fostering Hungarian-U.S. relations on the basis of mutual respect and goodwill.”

The Hungarian pro-Orbán press, however, is decidedly downbeat. The first report from Brussels by Tamara Judi, Magyar Nemzet’s correspondent there, reflects the likely fears of the Orbán government when it comes to the anticipated cozy future relations between the new Biden administration and the European Union. The “undisguised” joy expressed by top EU politicians, like Charles Michel, president of the European Council, and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and its possible implications for the right-wing Polish and Hungarian regimes is obviously something that worries Viktor Orbán. Another troubling remark came from Manfred Weber, who expressed his belief that “when visiting Europe, Biden should not first visit individual member states but should speak at a sitting of the European Parliament directly elected by Europeans.” That must have given chills to such fierce promoters of the nation state as Orbán. On the other hand, Judi was happy to report, at the end of her piece, that Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former acting chief of staff and U.S. envoy for Northern Ireland until he resigned on January 6 in protest over Trump’s role in the storming of the Capitol, said that “Europe’s relationship with the United States will never be the same again.” So, the liberals shouldn’t get their hopes up too high.

Now let’s see what an anonymous article that appeared in Origo titled “What can the world and Hungary expect in the coming years” has to say about the future. The article deals at length with the economic consequences of Biden’s policies and predicts the collapse of stock markets, high inflation, and the loss of jobs in the gas and oil industries. What is more interesting than this doomsday scenario for the U.S. economy, however, is the article’s analysis of Biden’s foreign policy initiatives. The Orbán regime has been expecting that the Biden administration will continue the anti-Chinese policies of Donald Trump. But, given the good relationship between Trump’s Washington and Budapest, Orbán didn’t have to face serious U.S. disapproval of the warm friendship between Hungary and China. This situation will most likely change.

It is likely, the article continues, that Washington will demand cooperation from its allies when it comes to a common policy toward Russia and China. In addition, what worries the present Hungarian regime is “the two other fronts where the United States and Russia might clash, Belarus and Ukraine.” According to the article, Trump recognized that “one mustn’t create an opaque civil-war-like situation” in Belarus, similar to that in Ukraine. But Biden “wholeheartedly supports the removal of Lukashenko,” whereas for Russia “Minsk is a strategic partner and one of its most important allies.” If the United States gets involved in Belarus, “it is equal to a declaration of war” against Russia. The same is true about Ukraine, with the added complication of Hunter Biden’s questionable business dealings in that country.

The article ends with an unusually frank description of Hungarian foreign policy vis-à-vis Ukraine. “Hungary currently is vetoing rapprochement between NATO and Ukraine, trying to ensure that the Ukrainians respect the rights of the Hungarian minority. Biden, on the other hand, could launch serious political attacks as he wants by all means to get the Ukrainians to join NATO.”

Finally, there is the question of the European Union. The Hungarian fear is that “the new direction” will be strongly felt in the EU. Radical left and liberal voices can now be spread with an “American tailwind.” In addition, the pro-immigration forces in Europe “will find partners in Biden.” The author predicts that Hungary will be the target of U.S. attacks because “from now on, anyone who doesn’t toe the ideological line dreamt up by the left can expect an attack not only from Brussels but also from the United States.” This is exactly the scenario the Hungarian opposition to Orbán has been hoping for. Now, we will see how many of these hopes will materialize.

January 20, 2021

Viktor Orbán feels contempt equally for Karl Marx and the Nazis

Hungarian news sites are brimming with articles about Viktor Orbán’s “samizdat letter #5.” You may recall that, at the beginning of December, I published a piece on “Viktor Orbán as the leader of a unique EU samizdat program.” The occasion for the publication of the blog post was a letter-writing campaign the prime minister initiated in answer to foreign leaders who dared to criticize him. Orbán initially didn’t number his letters, but I assume that “samizdat letter #1 and #2” were addressed to President Ursula von der Leyen and Vice President Věra Jourová, European Commissioner for Values and Transparency. The recipient of “samizdat letter #3” was Manfred Weber, and George Soros was the target of letter #4. Now, it was once again Manfred Weber’s turn.

Prompting this latest literary output was an interview Manfred Weber gave to Die Welt am Sonntag three days ago, headlined “Manfred Weber: Viktor Orbán wants to destroy Helmut Kohl’s Europe.” In it, Weber recalled that Orbán had compared the European Union to the Soviet Union. Weber sharply criticized him and his “nationalist-populist political approach and culture war.” The Hungarian prime minister, he said, looks upon the European Union as a “milking cow” (or a “cash cow”) instead of “a community of destiny and values.” Weber repeated his resolve to end Fidesz’s membership in the European People’s Party.

Here I will summarize part of the text of “samizdat #5,” available in both English and Hungarian. Orbán rejects Weber’s claim that Hungary’s policies over the past ten years are an “aberration” since the country’s economic performance, at least prior to the pandemic, was outstanding. Its GDP grew above the EU average, it lowered unemployment from 12 percent to below 4 percent, and it nearly doubled the average wage of workers. Hungary, Orbán brags, “has spent the most in relative terms on family support, culture and sport.”

Weber’s problem, Orbán writes in his response, is that Hungary prevented him from becoming president of the European Commission, but the leader of a European political party shouldn’t let such a failure give rise to personal anger or even hatred. Orbán further accuses Weber of joining “the elite club of the Left,” whose leaders claim that the Right has only extremes and that therefore it is synonymous with “fascism, Nazism, nationalism, anti-Semitism and homophobia,” while on the Left there is no danger of extremism. However, Orbán adds, “the people in Brussels must understand that, for us in Central Europe, our contempt for Marx, Lenin and communism is no less than what we feel for Nazis and national socialism.”

At this point I decided to ignore the rather mundane further rantings of Viktor Orbán about migrants, sovereignty, sanctions, and the withdrawal of funds. Instead, let’s talk about Central Europeans’ “contempt for Marx” that is on a par with their abhorrence of the Nazis and national socialism. Does Viktor Orbán really believe that the output of Adolf Hitler and the ideologues of Nazism can be compared to the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels? Can he not distinguish between products of Nazi propagandists and the theoretical works of these two important figures of the nineteenth century? Is he this ignorant?

My amazement at his ignorance was bolstered by an article in Azonnali that I had read earlier. The author of “Friedrich Engels, for the Right he is a question of erudition and for the Left a reference point” was Alpár Losoncz, a professor of political philosophy at the University of Novi Sad/Újvidék. Although Karl Marx, best known as the author of Das Kapital, has been proven wrong on just about everything he wrote, he is still a towering figure who had an enormous influence on the history of the last 150 years.

For Orbán to throw together Marx, Lenin, and communism is itself a primitive reconstruction of history. Those Western, mostly German, socialists who followed Marx and Engels were responsible, in the final analysis, for the gradual improvement in the living standards of the workers and ultimately for what we call the welfare state. The Soviet system as developed by the Bolsheviks was an aberration, and neither the Soviet nor the Chinese political system can be described as “communism” in the sense in which Marx used the term.

In 2018, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, the Goethe Institute launched a project called “Marx Now,” which includes many dozens of articles about various aspects of his work and their significance. But even earlier, immediately after the unification of Germany, Helmut Kohl’s government made the decision to continue the work started in 1975 by the Institutes of Marxism-Leninism in East Germany. It is the largest collection of the writings of Marx and Engels and is known as Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA). The material was transferred to the Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung in Amsterdam, where the work continues, although the printing and binding are done in Germany. So far, 65 volumes of MEGA have been published. The project is expected to reach 114 volumes.

Interestingly, when I was a student in “socialist” Hungary, I never read anything by Marx or Engels. Instead, a translation of a Soviet textbook was used in a compulsory course, called “political economy,” for all university students regardless of their majors. It was a terrible experience.

But I’m still outraged that this ignorant Hungarian autocrat, speaking in the name of Central Europeans, compares the works of Marx and Engels to Mein Kampf and other Nazi writings.

December 30, 2020

Do EPP sanctions on Deutsch foreshadow Fidesz’s departure from the group?

Tonight the European People’s Party voted, 133 to 6, to restrict Tamás Deutsch’s activities as a member of EPP. It was only a few days ago that I outlined Fidesz-founder Deutsch’s controversial comments about Manfred Weber, leader of EPP’s parliamentary group, in which he compared Weber’s comments to Gestapo-like behavior.

Half-heartedly, Deutsch apologized to Weber. His apology was actually more of a “clarification’’ of his opinions on the rule of law mechanism, which is “reminiscent of the political arbitrariness” of the Third Reich and the Soviet socialist system. Deutsch also dispatched an explanation to his fellow EPP members, which was not generally well received, with 40 MEPs demanding Deutsch’s expulsion from EPP.

Yesterday, ahead of the meeting scheduled for today, Deutsch repeated his apology for the third time, surely on the instruction of Viktor Orbán. This time, he admitted that he had made a mistake and offered to take back “the unfortunate comparison.”

The vote on how to deal with Deutsch took place tonight. A leaked draft decision of the EPP Group ahead of the vote reaffirmed the group’s support of “EPP leaders Jean Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk, Ursula von der Leyen and Manfred Weber in their defense of EPP values and particularly, in their defense of the Rule of Law conditionality.” The group also “strongly condemns” the statements made by Tamás Deutsch which are “in clear contradiction to European Christian Democracy and to EPP values.” Finally, the group expressed its disapproval of “the frequent attacks by Fidesz representatives towards the European Union and its values [which] are not in line with the core beliefs of the EPP, namely the European integration, Rule of Law, independent judiciary, media free of political intervention, support of civil society, protection of human rights and protection of all minorities.”

The recommendation was not to expel Deutsch from EPP but to withdraw “with immediate effect from Tamás Deutsch all rights to speaking time in plenary on behalf of the Group, to nomination as a (shadow) rapporteur or other formal positions on behalf of the Group as well as to any position or post belonging to the EPP group according to Parliament’s d’Hondt system until further decisions are made.” The last item was a call to make “a final decision on the membership of Fidesz” immediately after all members can gather in person to vote on Fidesz’s status.

Many non-government media outlets interpreted this “compromise” in an unfavorable light. Mérce’s conclusion was that, since Deutsch’s expulsion was unlikely, “Fidesz’s removal from EPP in the near future is improbable.” The wily Orbán won again. This was Politico’s verdict as well. The authors’ conclusion was that not expelling Deutsch means that Viktor Orbán is “likely to cling on—for now.” The article stressed Angela Merkel’s fear of Orbán’s “declaring war on German economic interests in Hungary” if the German EPP members vote for expulsion. An anonymous “EPP insider” expressed the opinion that “for Merkel, expelling Fidesz is not a party decision, it is a state decision.” Daniel Caspary, chairman of the German CDU/CSU delegation, denied receiving instructions from Merkel on Deutsch.

Manfred Weber and Daniel Caspary

Mária Vásárhelyi, writing in Hírklikk, had some harsh words about the courage of EPP members. She noted the conservative group’s ten years of indifference as far as Fidesz rule in Hungary was concerned. And indeed, EPP’s behavior has been reprehensible and cowardly. However, I don’t think that the “punishment” EPP imposed is as disgraceful as we might have expected from the group. If they knew that the numbers to expel Deutsch were simply not there, it would have been foolish, in my opinion, to go ahead with a vote that would have resulted in Deutsch’s exoneration. That would surely have been a victory for Viktor Orbán.

Ahead of the vote, Benedek Jávor, former MSZP MEP and now the representative of Budapest in Brussels, wrote a Facebook note that is somewhat hard to interpret. On the one hand, he seemed to be disappointed by the proposed solution, but he still found it “an option that humbles Deutsch into the dust who then will have no choice but to voluntarily leave the group.” According to Jávor, this solution “also humiliates other Fidesz members who have to watch their leader publicly pilloried; they will also have no option but to show solidarity with Deutsch either by leaving or relinquishing all their functions in the group. In other words, Fidesz cannot be kept in EPP this way if that was the goal.”

If Jávor’s predictions pan out, the problem is solved. The whole lot will leave EPP, and who cares whether they do that voluntarily or not, especially since we know that Fidesz is in talks with the parties of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group.

As for the reaction coming from Fidesz and the Orbán government ahead of the vote, only Gergely Gulyás, deputy chair of Fidesz and Orbán’s chief-of-staff, spoke about the expulsion issue. He announced on Hír TV that “membership in EPP is not a vital issue for Fidesz.” At the last few EP elections EPP kept losing sizable chunks of its membership while Fidesz received better and better results during the same period. There are disagreements on such vital issues as immigration that make cooperation exceedingly difficult. But he generously offered Fidesz’s assistance and advice to improve EPP’s lot, which we know is to turn sharply to the right, following Viktor Orbán’s guidance.

December 16, 2020

Viktor Orbán as the leader of a unique EU samizdat program

Viktor Orbán’s latest stunt is a letter-writing campaign in which he answers politicians or public figures not to his liking who, in written form, interviews, or speeches, dared to criticize him or his regime. The most striking thing about his last letter, “Europe has not surrendered,” addressed to George Soros, is the notation “Samizdat #4.” After a few minutes, I found EU Samizdat #3, which was the prime minister’s response to Manfred Weber. The recipients of the first and second EU Samizdat letters are not disclosed, but I suspect they were EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Vice President Věra Jourová, commissioner for values and transparency.

It was in “EU samizdat #3” that Orbán complained to Weber about the exclusion of the views of Central Europeans from the Western European mainstream media. But, as he continued, “that’s nothing new … to us Central Europeans. In fact, this is why we invented samizdat. The clandestine press. Write, print, read, share! Sam izdat: about us, for us.”

Again, one doesn’t know whether Orbán is that ignorant or whether he deliberately distorts the facts. The Russian origin of the word is common knowledge: it is the abbreviated form of “Samsebyaizdat,” meaning “Myself by Myself Publishers,” coined by Nikolai Glazkov in the 1940s. Neither Glazkov nor his followers in Russia and later in East-Central Europe ever published about themselves for themselves. Just the opposite. So, that is the first problem with Orbán’s expropriation of the term. The second is that, although Fidesz began to take part in the country’s political life in 1988, its student leaders, including Orbán, had nothing to do with samizdat publications, like Beszélő or Hírmondó, two of the best-known typewritten periodicals of the time. Miklós Haraszti, the editor of Beszélő, shortly after the appearance of “EU Samizdat #3” made that clear in an interview with Hírklikk. In fact, I heard from a reliable source that one of the editors of Beszélő once asked Viktor Orbán whether he would like to contribute an article to Beszélő, an invitation he not very graciously declined. He had no interest in such endeavors, he said.

It is bad enough that the prime minister writes convoluted and insulting letters at the drop of the hat, but it is truly frightening that, judging from this numbering scheme, he is planning to continue his childish pen-pal habit, making himself and the country a laughingstock.

The alleged reason for writing Samizdat #4 is an article the disappointed George Soros wrote in Project Syndicate on December 10. In it, he expresses his belief that “threatening to torpedo the EU’s finances by vetoing its budget was a desperate gamble on Orbán’s part. But it was a bluff that should have been called. Unfortunately, Merkel has, it appears, caved in to Hungarian and Polish extortion.” He closed his piece by expressing “the moral outrage that people who believed in the EU as the protector of European and universal values must feel. I also want to warn that his compromise may severely dent the hard-won confidence that the Union’s institutions have gained through the creation of the recovery fund.”

Orbán’s debating style hasn’t changed. Just as in his earlier letters, he begins with an ad hominem attack that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Soros’s “crocodile tears” will not return the money “the speculator has stolen from millions of people.” But “Europe has not surrendered,” and Soros’s grandiose plan was averted.

Source: Politico / Getty’s image

After this joyous announcement, Orbán begins his falsification of the rule-of-the law conditionality story and the Merkel compromise. The veto threat, he writes, was about “who will govern Europe in the future? That’s what was really at stake at last week’s meeting. Will Europe be governed by the government elected by the citizens of Member States and their council, or will Soros succeed in building a new power structure?” In Orbán’s interpretation, his long-held demand triumphed last week. His struggle for a European Union of member states as opposed to a United States of Europe ended this past week. The other 25 countries all saw the light and supported the Polish and Hungarian view of the EU.

Finally, let’s look at Orbán’s spin on the motivation of the other 25 member states when they decided to sign off on the document. The European Commission made public its “European Rule of Law Mechanism” for each member state on October 9. The document on the state of democracy in Hungary was both thorough and devastating. According to Orbán, however, leading politicians of the member states read the rule-of-law reports that “Soros and Frans Timmermans dictated to Ms. Jourová” on Hungary and Poland, and they discovered that they would all be found guilty one day unless they stopped this witch-hunt.

One must admire Orbán’s limitless imagination and the depth of his mendacity. In the past, he has amply demonstrated his ruthless victimization of those who stand in his way. Countless broken lives attest to his viciousness in Hungary. One can disagree about the meaning and significance of the compromise solution to the Polish-Hungarian threat of veto, but no one in his right mind would interpret it as a victory of member states over integration or as a way of depriving George Soros from becoming the ruler of the European Union.

December 13, 2020

Viktor Orbán in search of a new EP group

The cacophony surrounding the meaning of the agreement reached yesterday on the rule of law conditionality has reached a level that is hard to take. Commentators vehemently argue over totally contrary facts pulled from thin air. Each side is convinced of the truth of its position. While the debate continues to rage in the newspapers and on radio, television, and social media, I want to take a deep breath and wait until the European Commission and the European Parliament review the text of the rule of law mechanism and compare it to the text of the four-page document agreed to by Angela Merkel and the prime ministers of Poland and Hungary. These two texts, which currently have contradictory assertions, must be reconciled. In addition, the Commission must compile a third document that will explain how the mechanism will be applied. As far as I can see, there isn’t much use in discussing the matter until there is more clarity on the issues involved.

So, let’s take a break and return to the relationship between the European People’s Party and Fidesz. I left the story at the point that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had written to Manfred Weber (CDU), leader of EPP. The letter was sent after Tamás Deutsch, leader of the Fidesz contingent within EPP, in a heated television discussion, compared Weber’s mild criticism of Orbán’s reluctance to accept the rule of law conditionality to the practices of the Gestapo and the Hungarian ÁVO. What followed was a letter by 30 EPP members demanding the exclusion of Tamás Deutsch from the group. Deutsch’s letter of apology, which sounded more like a feeble attempt to exonerate himself, didn’t do the trick. It looks as if the procedure against Deutsch is proceeding.

Viktor Orbán, most likely sensing the seriousness of the situation, decided to offer a different arrangement between EPP and Fidesz, which on closer observation would require Fidesz to first renounce its membership in EPP in order to rejoin it “on the former EPP-ED model.” Orbán, it would seem, is trying to stave off the likely expulsion of Fidesz from EPP by offering a deal that might be more palatable to Donald Tusk, the EPP president, and Manfred Weber, the leader of EPP’s parliamentary group.

EPP is usually sluggish, but this time it is moving quickly. The Austrian OE24 television station was the first to report that Deutsch’s expulsion would be discussed this week, and, indeed, on Wednesday the procedure against Deutsch began. Weber, who was present at the meeting, announced that, in the spring of 2020, 14 member parties suggested removing Fidesz altogether from EPP. Although Orbán’s letter to Weber, as far as we know, has remained unanswered, the parliamentary leader of EPP indicated that “next week they will discuss that matter as well.”

Today’s news in HVG might explain what the Fidesz leadership is planning to do under the threat of expulsion from EPP, assuming that EPP doesn’t accept Orbán’s proposal. The article concentrates on the conflation of government and party in the Orbán regime when the foreign minister of the country is on a special trip to meet three far-right politicians, not on a government but a political mission. Although I certainly decry the practice, what interested me most in the story was the trip itself. As László Arató (EUrologus) learned, yesterday Péter Szijjártó flew from Budapest to The Hague, then on to Copenhagen, and finally to Helsinki. During the day he met with Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, Morten Messerschmidt of the Danish People’s Party, and Ville Tavio and Simo Grönroos of the Party of the Finns. None of these party leaders has any governmental position, and therefore it is obvious that Szijjártó was performing an urgent mission on behalf of the chairman of Fidesz, Viktor Orbán.

The happy family: Matteo Salvini, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and Frauke Petry (AfD)

We have suspected for a while that the departure of Fidesz from EPP was in the offing. In that event, the obvious EP group for Fidesz to join would be the European Conservatives and Reformists. In fact, at the time of Fidesz’s suspension from EPP, the Polish Ryszard Legutko, co-chair of the group, made it clear that the group would welcome Fidesz with open arms. This was especially the case since the Polish party PiS has 23 members of the 62-member group.

But the parties whose leaders Szijjártó visited yesterday belong to another group, the newly formed Identity and Democracy (ID), a far-right, Euroskeptic group that includes, among others, Matteo Salvini’s Liga, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, and Alternative for Germany (AfD). The group currently has 75 members. Were Fidesz to join, it would have 88 members. That would make the ID group the fourth largest in the European Parliament after the European People’s Party, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, and the Renew Europe group.

Some of you may recall an extraordinary conversation between Viktor Orbán and Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher, which I quoted in part in May 2019, in which Orbán talked about the future of Fidesz in the European Parliament. At that time, Orbán was hopeful that the far right would have such a strong showing in the EP elections that it could form a separate parliamentary group. He told Lévy that Hungary is not strong enough to be the leader of such a group, but he categorically rejected any association with Marine Le Pen because his conservative French friends warned her that “she is a red line.”

Necessity makes strange bedfellows. I can recommend a short essay on the parties that make up ID. It is a group where Fidesz could at last feel at home and where the party really belongs.

December 11, 2020