Hungarian Fidesz and EPP: Gestapo settlement causes affront

The EU has not been on good terms with Hungary for a long time, especially not after the current budget blockade. Now the Hungarian Fidesz is also causing an affront within the conservative party family.

By Helga Schmidt, ARD-Studio Brussels

Manfred Weber comes under pressure. The CSU politician is chairman of the Christian Democratic party family in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP). How can it be that Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party is still a member of the EPP? MEPs from other groups have been asking this for a long time.

Since yesterday evening, the debate has also flared up within the EPP. The reason is a Gestapo settlement. The Hungarian EPP MP Tamás Deutsch, a co-founder of the Fidesz party, had said, according to the online platform “Euronews”, that parliamentary group leader Weber reminded him of the Gestapo when he announced in his speeches that if you had nothing to hide, you had to go The rule of law mechanism also do not fear anything.

Demand for consequences

An affront within the own party family. The Austrian EPP MP Othmar Karas is outraged:

“If the advocacy of the rule of law and a rule of law mechanism with a bite for European values ​​and for investments in the future reminds you of the Gestapo and reminds you of the Stalinist secret service, you must immediately apologize in public to Manfred Weber or leave the parliamentary group.”

Karas is the first to venture out by calling for sanctions against his Hungarian parliamentary group colleague. Because so far the cooperation with the Hungarians within the EPP has mostly always been praised. “There is no place for such an attitude in either the party or the parliamentary group,” says Karas. “We must not go back to the agenda, we must draw clear conclusions.”

Hungary and Poland discuss the rule of law mechanism

It is still unclear what the consequences will be. The Brussels MEPs are looking excitedly to Budapest today. Prime Minister Orban receives his Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki there. Both want to prevent the new rule of law procedure, because both must fear that it would cut them millions of euros in EU funding. In protest, Orban and Morawiecki have been blocking the Corona economic aid and the EU’s multi-year budget for ten days. Today they want to discuss how to proceed.

“The autocrats are taking the EU hostage,” says Martin Schirdewan, a member of the European Left. Orban had become so strong because he had been able to count on the EPP for ten years: “The EPP still refuses – and I am now quoting a somewhat more far-sighted conservative – to exclude the little dictator Orban.” To demand the rule of law on the one hand and at the same time to “nurse” their enemies is not only untrustworthy, it also damages democracy in the long term.

At the beginning of the week, parliamentary group leader Weber referred to a long-running motion for an expulsion procedure for the entire Fidesz party. Because of Corona, you cannot vote on it for the time being, the personal presence of the delegates is necessary.