Speaking on public Kossuth radio on Sunday, Fidesz MEP Tamás Deutsch commented on Brussels still withholding the EU funds Hungary is entitled to. (UPDATE: On Monday night, EU ambassadors have reached an agreement regarding the global minimum tax, the Ukraine aid package and the Hungarian recovery funds. Our commentary on the development to be published soon.) According to Deutsch, despite the fact that Hungary has complied with all 17 of its commitments made in order to address rule of law concerns, the European Commission has recently recommend the same sanctions against the country to the European Council as at the outset of the negotiations. He suggested that the European Commission’s real issue with Hungary was Hungary’s opposition to Brussels with regard to immigration and the sanctions policy, as well as Hungary having passed its child protection law.
Deutsch recalled that Belgian liberal MEP and former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt has suggested that Hungary’s EU financing be cut off entirely if the Orbán government continues to oppose EU policies. The Fidesz MEP called Verhofstadt a ‘Hungary-hater’ in response, noting that
Verhofstadt’s stance proved Brussels was lying about safeguarding democratic ideals and European values
when it took action against Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Croats. While the official explanation for various punitive measures against these countries was their disregard for the rule of law, the actual issue the bureaucrats had with them, particularly Hungary and Poland, was their resistance to obey Brussels’s diktats.
‘Family abuse is one of the most heinous crimes’, Deutsch stated, drawing a parallel between comparing what was occurring within the European Union to domestic violence. According to the Fidesz MEP, 85 to 90 per cent of Hungarians agree that Hungary should reject illegal immigration, secure its borders, and uphold the child protection law. Additionally, he said, Hungarians also overwhelmingly oppose the ‘catastrophic sanctions’.
He criticized Brussels for coming up with every ‘imaginable and unimaginable condition’ to Romania and Bulgaria‘s Schengen membership despite the fact that the two countries had already met all of the requirements. As Deutsch put it, ‘cocky, arrogant Western member states’ have again vetoed Sophia Bucharest‘s Schengen membership. Deutsch declared that Western members should stop acting in a ‘condescending, smug, colonialist manner,’ and that numerous EU-wide agreements need to be re-evaluated.
On a different note, Tamás Deutsch said
it has become clear the European left is receiving ‘incredibly large sums of money’ from outside the EU.
Deutsch reminded of the two most recent cases: the Hungarian left-wing opposition having received substantial, probably illegal campaign funding from a United States-based NGO, and Greek Socialist MEP and European Parliament vice-president Eva Kaili having been accused of accepting money from an unnamed Middle Eastern country (in all likelihood, Qatar) to promote its interests in the European Union. Deutsch remarked that these scandals reveal the hypocrisy of the European left that is the most vocal critic of the alleged corruption in Hungary while its prominent figures are involved in high profile bribery cases.
UPDATE: Eva Kaili has since been placed in custody by Belgian authorities after bags of cash were found in her home during a house search.
Related Articles:
