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Opposition parties turn to EU over Gruevski affair
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Conservative opposition Jobbik is turning to the European Commission over the case of former Macedonian PM Nikola Gruevski, Jobbik deputy leader Márton Gyöngyösi told a press conference he held jointly with Ádám Mirkóczki, the (Jobbik) head of parliament’s national security committee, on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Gruevski said on Facebook that he has been granted asylum by Hungary.
Gyöngyösi said his party wanted to know whether the EC has examined how the principles of the rule of law are applied in Macedonia’s justice and legal systems.
If Macedonia “passes the test”, the Hungarian authorities will have no choice but to extradite Gruevski, he said. But if the EC has not looked into the state of the rule of law in Macedonia, Jobbik expects it to, he added.
Gyöngyösi said the Gruevski affair raised “countless questions” about the Hungarian government’s former dealings with the Macedonian ex-premier, whom he called “the originator and primary user of the ‘Stop Soros’ campaigns”. He said Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó had even addressed one of Gruevski’s campaign events.
He said it was “no accident” that Viktor Orbán’s government “has granted asylum to Mr. Gruevski on the grounds that the former prime minister was fleeing the revenge of Soros”.
Gyöngyösi said that up until now, only “banana republics and dictatorships were known to take in failed leaders”.
“It is without precedent that a European Union member state should do this with the former politician of a candidate country,” he said.
In response to a question, Ádám Mirkóczki said the EC had no deadline to respond to Jobbik’s query. He added, however, that given the magnitude of the case “and the international scandal it has caused”, the party expects the body to respond in a relatively short amount of time.
He said the government’s communication concerning the affair was “not only chaotic, but riddled with contradictions, lies and all about running from relevant questions”.
Mirkóczki said the government had “misled” the national security committee, arguing that the foreign ministry had told him that neither it, nor the intelligence community had any information on the Gruevski affair.
He said that contrary to the government’s communication, the decision to grant Gruevski asylum was a political, rather than a legal decision.