Orban’s Fidesz Party Suspended from European Parliament’s Largest Group

On 20 March 2019, the BBC report­ed that Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán’s rul­ing par­ty has been sus­pend­ed from the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­t’s largest polit­i­cal group­ing amid con­cerns over its defi­ance of EU poli­cies. The arti­cle begins:

The rul­ing par­ty of Hun­gary’s right-wing Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban has been sus­pend­ed by the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­t’s biggest group­ing in a row over defi­ance of EU poli­cies. In an almost unan­i­mous vote, the Euro­pean Peo­ple’s Par­ty (EPP) agreed to with­draw Fidesz’s vot­ing rights. Before the vote, Fidesz offi­cials had threat­ened to pull out of the EPP if it was sus­pend­ed. How­ev­er, Mr Orban react­ed defi­ant­ly, say­ing “we can­not be exclud­ed”. Although the sus­pen­sion stops short of com­plete expul­sion, the deci­sion comes as a blow for the Hun­gar­i­an leader on the eve of an EU sum­mit. After a heat­ed debate and 190 votes in favour of sus­pen­sion, the par­ty decid­ed to accept the result, with Mr Orban even sug­gest­ing that it was a “joint deci­sion”… Read more

Key Points:

• The EPP vot­ed 190–0 to sus­pend Fidesz’s vot­ing rights while main­tain­ing its mem­ber­ship, cre­at­ing imme­di­ate penal­ties for Orbán’s leadership.
• An anti-immi­gra­tion poster cam­paign fea­tur­ing Jean-Claude Junck­er and George Soros was cit­ed as the final trig­ger for the suspension.
• Three “wise men” will assess whether Fidesz vio­lates the cen­ter-right bloc’s val­ues, with the sus­pen­sion last­ing beyond the Euro­pean elections.
• Orban’s accep­tance of the sus­pen­sion reflects polit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion, allow­ing him to main­tain EPP ties while con­tin­u­ing his anti-immi­gra­tion rhetoric.

Orbán and Hun­gary have fig­ured promi­nent­ly in a devel­op­ing alliance between US con­ser­v­a­tives and Euro­pean nation­al­ists, a poten­tial means for Rus­sia to exert covert influ­ence in Europe and the US using Hun­gary as a plat­form. GIOR has pub­lished a report on this alliance titled “The Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Alliance: An Oppor­tu­ni­ty for Russ­ian Influ­ence?” The GIOR report details the role that Vik­tor Orbán and the Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment have been play­ing in the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA).

The full report can be down­loaded here.

For more on Fidesz, go here.

Dis­claimer: The GOR uti­lizes AI to gen­er­ate sum­maries of news items, includ­ing the intro­duc­tion and the key points that fol­low. Any text fol­low­ing the key points is con­text added by GIOR edi­tors. Please ver­i­fy all infor­ma­tion before using. Images are also AI-gen­er­at­ed and are for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es only—they are meant to rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als con­cerned but should not be under­stood as “real-world” photography.