Ursula von der Leyen has accused Viktor Orbán of a historic failure to help Ukraine, financial mismanagement and making his nation a “back door for foreign interference” in her sharpest public rebuke but to Hungary’s strongman chief.
Standing a couple of metres away from Orbán within the European parliament in Strasbourg, the European Fee president pointedly criticised Orbán’s stance on Ukraine by contrasting his file with that of Hungarian freedom fighters of 1956, who rose in opposition to Soviet oppression however have been in the end defeated by the Pink Military.
With out naming Orbán immediately, she mentioned: “There are still some who blame this war not on Putin’s lust for power but on Ukraine’s thirst for freedom, so I want to ask them: would they ever blame the Hungarians for the Soviet invasion in 1956?”
She added: “There is no European language where peace is synonymous with surrender and sovereignty is synonymous with occupation.”
Von der Leyen was talking after Orbán set out the priorities for Hungary’s six-month EU presidency, in an deal with the place he typically supplied a reasonably typical script calling for much less regulation and efforts to bolster the EU’s single market.
This normally routine second within the EU calendar grew to become a boisterous session, with singing and private insults. Orbán’s MEPs in the far-right Patriots for Europe group applauded him, whereas the mainstream pro-European events clapped for von der Leyen. The Hungarian chief additionally needed to take heed to a rowdy rendition of the anti-fascist tune Bella Ciao from a small group, prompting the speaker, Roberta Metsola, to intervene to convey order: “This is not Eurovision.”
After Orbán lamented Europe’s declining share of world commerce, von der Leyen took him to job for Hungary’s financial insurance policies corresponding to taxes that focus on international corporations, export restrictions, “arbitrary inspections” and public contracts awarded to a small group of beneficiaries.
Whereas Orbán tried to forged himself as a powerful defender of European borders, she mentioned Hungarian authorities had launched convicted folks smugglers and traffickers early from jail, including: “This is not fighting illegal migration in Europe, this is not protecting our union, this is just throwing problems over your neighbour’s fence.”
Referring to an settlement that permits Chinese language police to patrol with their native counterparts in Hungary, she mentioned: “This is not defending Europe’s sovereignty, this is a back door for foreign interference.”
And he or she criticised Orbán for failing to comply with by on an EU pledge made in 2022 to finish dependency on Russian fossil fuels. “Instead of looking for alternative sources [of energy], in particular, one member state just looked for alternative ways to buy fossil fuels from Russia.”
The Hungarian chief mentioned he was shocked by what he had heard from von der Leyen and accused her of turning the fee into “a political weapon”. He rejected any comparability between the occasions of 1956 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, whereas reiterating that the EU, he believed, had a “losing strategy” over the conflict.
“We are never going to accept that European unity means that you tell us what to do and that we should keep quiet,” he mentioned.
Orbán additionally needed to hear his home file lambasted by the person broadly seen as his most harmful rival, the centre-right MEP Péter Magyar, chief of the Tisza social gathering, which made a political breakthrough in current European elections.
Magyar, a former member of the ruling Fidesz social gathering’s internal circle, grew to become a family title after brazenly breaking with the federal government, alleging corruption on the highest ranges. Orbán, Magyar mentioned, had turned Hungary from a brilliant star into “the poorest and most corrupt country in the EU”, in a speech that accused the federal government of presiding over emigration of Hungarians, dilapidated trains and declining requirements in hospitals.
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Hungary has the next GDP per capita than Slovakia, Greece, Latvia and Bulgaria in response to Eurostat; it’s the lowest ranked EU member state in Transparency Worldwide’s corruption perceptions index.
Lawmakers from throughout the EU additionally lined as much as criticise Orbán, with the Inexperienced group co-leader Terry Reintke summing up the temper: “You are not welcome here.” However the Hungarian chief was additionally praised: the far-right German MEP René Aust authorized of his “decisive action” on migration.
The fee president, who has confronted criticism for not being powerful sufficient on Hungary, drew reward for her forceful speech from mainstream pro-EU MEPs, who secured her a second time period a couple of months in the past.
“At last! @vonderleyen shows her claws in response to Viktor Orbán and denounces his double talk when he defends European sovereignty while he welcomes with open arms Russia and China in Hungary,” the French centrist MEP Laurence Farreng wrote on X.
“Viktor Orbán was just roasted by Ursula von der Leyen in the European parliament,” wrote one long-term critic, the German Inexperienced MEP Daniel Freund.
Contained in the parliament in Strasbourg, Freund and Transparency Worldwide Hungary organised an exhibition to showcase what they referred to as “some of the most absurd and wasteful projects funded by Hungarian and EU taxpayers’ money”.
Highlights included a village with 11 EU-funded commentary towers, lots of which have been both inaccessible or dismantled as a result of they have been harmful; a €1m biking observe that has been formally declared harmful and might solely be used on request on the bike owner’s personal danger; a seashore minus deliberate solar loungers, cafe and benches, the place guests are greeted with an indication “bathing at your own risk”. Beneficiaries of the general public contracts are often highly effective enterprise folks with shut hyperlinks to the ruling social gathering, in response to the exhibition materials.
The Hungarian authorities’s use of EU funds has lengthy involved lawmakers and the bloc’s anti-fraud physique has beforehand discovered “serious irregularities, fraud and possible corruption” within the building of a Budapest railway line.
Round €19bn (£16bn) of EU funds have been frozen over considerations in regards to the authorities’s management over judges, tutorial freedom and its failure to deal with corruption.
