Exactly a week has passed since it became evident that the President of the European Commission and the European Parliament are merely political tools of the left, wielded against sovereign, powerful nation states. Last Wednesday Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán spoke at the EP plenary session in Strasbourg, where MEPs were supposed to discuss the programme and main priorities of the Hungarian EU Presidency, as well as the challenges facing the EU. However, this discussion did not take place. Instead, the session turned into a politically motivated mud-slinging spectacle.
‘Competitiveness, migration, enlargement, and geopolitics were among the well-argued points in Orbán’s presentation, along with a few blunt and lucid observations, such as the undeniable link between illegal migration and the rise in anti-Semitism, homophobia, and misogyny. It was an opportunity for the Parliament and the Commission to bury the hatchet and engage in a real substantive debate—one that quickly devolved into collective hysteria, mantra recitations, and Instagram politics,’ Rodrigo Ballester writes in an opinion piece published by Brussels Signal.
‘Orbán in the European Parliament: Just One Adult in the Room’ is the title of the publication that perfectly captures what happened a week ago. The author recalls that immediately after the Hungarian prime minister’s speech, European Left MEPs broke into the anti-fascist song Bella Ciao—hardly behaviour befitting a MEP, right? It was so disruptive that EP President Roberta Metsola had to intervene. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
This was followed by speeches from various MEPs, with the author highlighting Valérie Hayer (Renew) and Raphael Glucksmann (S&D), who, in their usual mawkish style, berated Orbán—almost implying they needed to save the Hungarian people from the supposed clutches of the leader they have consistently re-elected since 2010. Ballester perfectly illustrates the typical left-wing response to criticism of the EU’s—clearly misguided—strategy in Ukraine as ‘the eternal reductio ad Putinum, which has become the sole and meager intellectual defence to stifle any debate on the war in Ukraine or beyond.’
The author notes that it was particularly surprising to see Ursula von der Leyen join in the accusations made by party politicians—accusations that Viktor Orbán later refuted in detail during his reply. ‘He seized the opportunity to expose the unbearable hypocrisy of European leaders—their messianism, the arrogance of those blinded by their own righteousness, their inability to face reality, and their sectarian view of Europe as a sacred totem, against which any criticism becomes blasphemy.’
The only difference from similar ‘debates’ in recent years, Ballester notes, is that this time antisemitism was not raised as an accusation against the Hungarian prime minister—an accusation that would have been even more absurd under the current circumstances. Hungary is one of the safest countries in the EU for the Jewish community, particularly since 7 October 2023.
The author concludes with the same observation many of us reached after watching last Wednesday's debate: ‘In this temple of political spectacle and exaggerated posturing, he [Prime Minister Viktor Orbán] demonstrated, over the course of three hours, that among the spoiled children, there was only one adult in the room.’
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