BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary’s right-wing prime minister has threatened to pull his party out of its group in the European Union’s legislature as the conservative group edges closer to excluding its largest Hungarian delegation.
In a letter on Sunday to chairman of the European People’s Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament Manfred Weber, Prime Minister Viktor Orban condemned a group proposal agreed to on Friday that would allow for entire parties to be excluded from the center-right EPP, rather than just individual MEPs as currently allowed.
Orban wrote that the proposed rules, which are expected to pass with a two-thirds vote at an EPP group meeting on Wednesday, were “tailor-made” to sanction his Fidesz party, and that “if Fidesz is not welcome, we do not feel compelled to stay in the Group.”
It is the latest in a series of ongoing clashes between the right-wing Fidesz and the EPP, the largest political family in Europe, and marks the closest Orban’s party has come to losing its place in the group’s ranks. The EPP suspended Fidesz’s membership in 2019 over concerns that it was eroding the rule of law in Hungary, engaging in anti-Brussels rhetoric and attacking the EPP leadership.
The EPP’s new rules would allow for suspended member parties to be expelled with a simple majority rather than a two-thirds vote, opening the way for Fidesz’s 11 delegates to lose their place in the group.
Some of the EPP’s more moderate national delegations have pushed for Fidesz’s expulsion, arguing it no longer represents the group’s values. In a statement in December, the EPP Group wrote that “the frequent attacks by Fidesz’ representatives towards the European Union and its values are not in line with the core beliefs of the EPP.”
Also in December, the EPP voted to suspend Tamas Deutsch, the head of Fidesz’s delegation, stripping him of his rights to speaking time in plenary sessions and removing him from his positions in the Group. The decision, which allowed Deutsch to remain an EPP member, came after the lawmaker compared EPP Group leader Weber to the Gestapo and Hungary’s communist-era secret police.
In his letter, Orban wrote that he would pull his party out of the EPP Group if the new rules are adopted, signaling he will not wait to see whether the EPP votes his party out at a later time.
A spokesman for the EPP Group in the European Parliament said that the changes to the rules “have nothing to do with the situation of Fidesz,” and that the vote will go forward as planned on Wednesday despite Orban’s letter.
“There is a broad majority support for the new rules,” Pedro Lopez de Pablo told The Associated Press in an email. “If once they are approved, some MEPs would like to initiate the procedure of suspending or expelling Fidesz, they will need to do it following the new rules. … We are not changing the rules of procedure of the EPP Group because of Fidesz.”
Othmar Karas, an Austrian EPP lawmaker and vice-president of the European Parliament, tweeted Monday that the vote on the procedural changes would go forward as planned.
“I am not going to let Orban succeed with blackmail again,” Karas wrote.
