“While we here in Hungary — and other leaders in their own countries — are literally fighting a life-and-death battle against the coronavirus, the EPP is indulging itself in power games within the bubble of bureaucrats in Brussels,” the prime minister wrote. “This is unacceptable.”

Orbán noted that Fidesz’s MEPs have left the EPP’s European Parliamentary group, refusing to accept “that the rights of Members of the European Parliament — and thus the rights of Hungarian voters — be restricted by an amendment of the Group’s statutes”.

The prime minister said the departure of Fidesz’s MEPs from the EPP group also opened up a “new perspective” in European politics. Orbán said Hungarians had “wanted to return the EPP — which is in continuous retreat, jettisoning its political values, as if from a sinking airship — to its former position as Europe’s leading intellectual and political force”.

The aim, he said, had been to once again make the conservative grouping “a large, strong, democratic formation of the right, which could bring together centrist, conservative and traditional Christian democratic parties and their voters into a great shared political home”.

But Orbán said this opportunity “was lost” on Wednesday and the EPP had become “an annexe of the European left”, meaning that there was “no longer any difference” on key issues like migration, family values and national sovereignty between itself and the left wing.

“There is good reason for parties on the European left and their leaders to light bonfires in celebration: they have expanded their numbers with the addition of another party,” he added.

Now, he said, Fidesz’s task was to help build a new European democratic right wing “that offers a home to European citizens who do not want migrants, who do not want multiculturalism, who have not descended into LGBTQ lunacy, who defend Europe’s Christian traditions, who respect the sovereignty of nations, and who see their nations not as part of their past, but as part of their future”.

Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó on Facebook slammed Weber for “organising the removal” of Fidesz from the European Parliamentary group instead of focusing on managing the coronavirus pandemic.

Szijjártó said it was time to ask “just how many hours” Weber had spent procuring vaccines “or anything else needed to protect the lives, health and jobs of the European people”.


MTI Photo: Tamás Kovács