European Interest

Hungary’s PM calls on Europe’s rightists to unite

Flickr/European People's Party/CC BY 2.0
“The European Commission is going, we are coming”, Orban said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban presented his vision for Europe, calling on right-wing parties across the European Union to rise up against the “undemocratic” governments of Western Europe.

“There is liberalism in the West, there is no democracy,” said Orban in a speech to ethnic Hungarians in Baile Tusnad, Romania, on July 28.

Orban added: “The European Commission is going, we are coming”.

As reported Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster, the European Commission has referred Orban’s government to the European Court of Justice for controversial laws punishing those giving aid to migrants, as well as over allegations of unfair treatment of refugees in Hungarian transit centres.

Commenting on the European Commission’s decision to refer Hungary to the EU Court of Justice, Orban said it’s insignificant. According to Reuters, he said the current decisions and proposals of the Commission were like “the last movements of frogs’ legs in biological experiments which we saw when we were at school, which no longer had significance”.

In a separate report, CNN noted that Orban on July 27 criticised German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s immigration policy. Speaking to German newspaper Bild, he said: “Everybody who is rescued must go back to Africa… Nobody should be brought in or allowed in. Immigration policy is not a common task for the EU. It is a national matter for each member state. Since 2015, they have tried to make this a common task – and have failed.”

According to Hungary Today, Orban also said he expects other countries to follow in the footsteps of the United States, Australia and Hungary and quit the talks on the United Nations Global Compact on Migration. He argued that since the majority of countries engaged in the talks are ones where migrants originate from, it is the interests of “those who support migration” that are being enforced.

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