Sebastian Kurz, the former chancellor of Austria; Balázs Orbán, the political director of the Prime Minister of Hungary; and Ján Figeľ, former European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth from Slovakia talked about what the results of the 2024 European Parliamentary election mean for the future of Europe at the opening panel discussion of MCC Feszt 2024 in Esztergom, Hungary.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has nominated Olivér Várhelyi, the current Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, as the next Commissioner for Hungary in the new European Commission. Várhelyi’s task will not be easy, as he has experienced numerous conflicts with the European Parliament over the past five years. Additionally, pro-war factions will likely do everything in their power to derail the Hungarian candidate’s nomination process.
For the fourth consecutive year, the European Commission has published its annual report on the rule of law, which comes with few surprises. In addition to Hungary, Brussels is now concerned about the rule of law in Slovakia and Italy, which is unsurprising given that both Member States have governments prioritizing national interests. Poland, on the other hand, has fallen off the EU’s ‘bad guy’ list since Brussels’ favourite, Donald Tusk, came to power. This year’s report leads to a single conclusion: the Commission views the rule of law as a tool for political and financial blackmail.
Mainstream political groups in the European Parliament have once again defied the will of the electorate, preventing Patriots for Europe (PfE), the EP’s third largest group, from gaining top jobs in parliamentary committees. Kinga Gál, PfE’s First Vice-Chairman, stated that they will challenge the decision at the Conference of Presidents and did not rule out taking the case to the EU’s top court.
Balázs Orbán, the political director of the Hungarian Prime Minister, discussed Viktor Orbán’s peace mission and its impact in a lengthy post on X. He wrote: ‘The winds of change are upon us; it’s time for European leaders to overcome years of war psychosis!’
After some details had been circulating in the press for days, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán decided to release his ten-point proposal and assessment he had sent to the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, following his peace mission. The document is the most detailed plan for achieving peace in Ukraine that has ever been made public since the war broke out in February 2022.
Viktor Orbán has been receiving increasing praise from Germany in recent days—something that has not happened for a long time. Henryk M. Broder, a columnist for the German newspaper Die Welt, lauded the Hungarian Prime Minister for his peace mission, stating that, seeing the EU’s failure, Orbán has taken Europe’s fate into his own hands and is doing so quite skillfully. Additionally, a left-wing German MP remarked that Orbán’s peace mission justifies why the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.
All indications suggest that Brussels simply cannot get over Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission. In the latest development, 63 MEPs have written an open letter to EU leaders, urging them to strip Hungary of its voting rights in response to the prime minister’s ‘rogue’ diplomacy. Additionally, the European Commission has instructed its commissioners to skip informal ministerial meetings organized by the Hungarian EU presidency.
‘This new coalition (between the EPP, S&D, and Renew) wants to ignore what has been decided by free and sovereign nations that have grown tired of the policies imposed by Brussels. The interests of the voters are being systematically trampled on in a scandalous way,’ Vox MEP Hermann Terstch told Hungarian Conservative in a recent interview.
In a break with tradition, Viktor Orbán’s speech at the first plenary session of the European Parliament, where he was to present the programme of the Hungarian Presidency, may be postponed. The stated reason is that the Hungarian PM’s speech does ‘not fit into the EP’s timetable’.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.