Opposition parties criticise government’s foreign policy

While Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “is working on disrupting the unity of the European Union”, he is “putting a lot of effort” into getting into the “club of dictators”, the opposition Socialists said in reaction to Orbán’s talks with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi in Budapest on Monday.

Socialists

A look at the slate of world leaders Orbán has “cozied up to” over the past few months will “tell us where Hungary is heading,” Socialist Party leader Gyula Molnár said. After Russian and Turkish presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Orbán has now “met the leader of a military state” while Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó recently paid visits to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, he said.

Molnár said it was a “serious political and historical error” to say that these states “should be seen by Hungary as examples to be followed”.

The policy of opening up to the East can be an important economic policy, but politically it cannot be an alternative to Europe in any way, the party leader insisted. The Socialist Party cannot accept a foreign policy stance that is “at war with the European Union”, he added. The Socialists were the ones to “take Hungary into the EU” in 2004 and they “will be the ones to keep it there” after 2018, Molnár said.

On the subject of Jobbik party’s announcement that it would initiate an impeachment procedure against President János Áder, Molnár said he had asked his party’s parliamentary group to support the motion.