Tomorrow the Hungarian prime minister will host a “summit,” as Pesti Srácok called the meeting to be held in Viktor Orbán’s office with Matteo Salvini, deputy prime minister of Italy, and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. The gathering was most likely initiated by Orbán, whose party left the European People’s Party on March 18.
Fidesz’s 13-member contingent already lost a member, József Szájer, in December 2020 after he was caught at a scandalous homosexual orgy. Later in January, Tamás Deutsch, who compared the president of EPP, Manfred Weber, to members of the Gestapo or the communist secret services, was stripped of all of his parliamentary functions, one of which was his position as fourth vice-chairman of the budgetary control committee.
After leaving EPP and becoming independent MEPs, all Fidesz members were deprived of their seats on parliamentary committees. Although Tamás Deutsch, leader of the Fidesz contingent, finds the practice of divesting independent members of their committee memberships discriminative and promised “to initiate a change of rules which would allow the 12 independent Fidesz MEPs to participate in the parliamentary committees,” I doubt that the plan will succeed. As Katalin Halmai, Népszava’s correspondent in Brussels, reported, EPP is already busily distributing the positions left behind by Fidesz members among other representatives of EPP.
The only Fidesz EP member to avoid the blood letting was Lívia Járóka, one of the vice-presidents of the European Parliament, who could retain her high position in the European Parliament. The explanation for this exception was simple and fair. While the committee memberships were allotted to Fidesz MEPs by EPP, Járóka was elected by the European Parliament as a whole. However, even Járóka is under a cloud now because the Committee on Legal Affairs just stripped her of her parliamentary immunity. In 2018, a car registered to Járóka was caught speeding by a surveillance camera (traffipax). Subsequently, the Belgian prosecutors wanted to have a chat with her to ascertain whether she was driving the vehicle at the time. But because Járóka apparently doesn’t have an officially registered address in Belgium, they were stymied. The authorities thus turned to the European Parliament, asking them to lift her immunity. And they obliged.
Azonnali has a useful guide to the monetary losses both EPP and the Fidesz members incurred as a result of the “divorce.” The amount of money a delegation receives depends on its size, and the paper figures that the departure of the Fidesz members cost EPP approximately €308,000. At the same time, independent Fidesz members will also suffer considerable financial losses, the size of which is not yet clear. What will hurt them politically will be the considerable limits imposed on their participation even in the plenary sessions. Independent members can be “coordinators” only with special permission, and they are explicitly barred from serving as shadow rapporteurs.
Under these circumstances, it is to Fidesz’s advantage to find a new home as soon as possible. As we have discussed earlier, there are two political groups that would be happy to have the 12 Fidesz MEPs in their EP delegations: the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Identity and Democracy (ID). ECR has 62 members, with its largest party being Jarosław Kaczyński’s PiS. ID has 75 members, most of whom come from Salvini’s League, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement national (RN), and the German Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Some of the government propaganda papers, like Pesti Srácok, keep insisting that “tomorrow’s meeting will be of historic importance, where a discussion will take place about the creation of a right-wing bloc that could be a real alternative to the left-wing EPP…. Members of the sovereigntists got so far that they are now seriously talking about the future and creation of a modern European right.” Obviously, Pesti Srácok pays no attention to the “official paper” of Fidesz and the government, Magyar Nemzet, which reported that Salvini made it clear that the conversation will not center on the creation of a new European parliamentary delegation by merging ECR and ID. Earlier, Katalin Novák in an interview with a Belgian newspaper stated that “cooperation doesn’t necessarily involve a new structure or delegation.”
Most commentators doubt that Orbán’s hope to merge the two far-right groups can materialize. Salvini joined Mario Draghi’s government, and lately he has stopped his harsh criticism of the European Union. Then there is the Russian stumbling block. Salvini, according to the Italian press, became an important politician in Italy with Putin’s assistance. The anti-Russian Poles wouldn’t tolerate an Italian Trojan horse in their political family. And, for Viktor Orbán, the presence of Marine Le Pen’s party in ID is a problem. A few years ago, in an interview, he said he was firmly opposed to cooperating with Le Pen because she has been in opposition for years and opposition parties, since they have no governmental responsibilities, cannot be trusted. Her close association with Putin is also problematic as far as the Poles are concerned.
Moreover, as István Szent-Iványi, a foreign policy analyst, points out, far-right parties rarely cooperate for long; such groupings splinter easily. They are known for their rigid ideological stances and their nationalism. As long as each party exclusively pursues its own self-interest, cooperation is well nigh impossible. In addition, the Poles, after the British members left as a result of Brexit, constitute the strongest group in ECR. This is a position they would hate to abandon to a group within which different national groups have widely divergent goals.
All in all, it is unlikely that, at least for the time being, Orbán’s dream will become a reality. On the other hand, last Friday morning Orbán bragged about his plan B (and presumably C, D, and more), adding that “it isn’t a secret that there were plans in the desk drawer.”
