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Orbán, RMDSZ leader discuss EP election preparations
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Prime Minister Viktor Orbán discussed preparations for the upcoming European parliamentary elections with the leader of Romania’s ethnic Hungarian RMDSZ party in Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár) on Wednesday.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Hunor Kelemen, Orbán urged ethnic Hungarians in Romania to vote for RMDSZ’s candidates to ensure a stronger representation of Hungarians in Brussels. He said he was optimistic about the election about both his Fidesz party and RMDSZ having “good chances”.
Asked about Fidesz’s membership in the European People’s Party, Orbán said that it was Fidesz that had suggested that it should not exercise its voting rights in the EPP as long as open issues are settled. “We suspended our participation,” he said, and added that “we are not going to wait for the EPP to make a decision, but will go ahead and make one on our own”.
“What matters is not the EPP, but where Fidesz will find its place to appropriately represent Hungarian interests in a new European political situation following the election,”
he said. Fidesz’s decision will fundamentally depend on the direction in which the EPP decides to go, he added.
Orbán said the EPP was preparing to enter into a strategic alliance with the European Left. This was unacceptable, Orbán said, and argued that “the entirety of the European Left has adopted a pro-migration stance”. Meanwhile, he said, stopping migration was the most important issue in central Europe. Orbán said this was the dilemma that would have to be resolved after the election.
The EPP, he suggested, should follow Austria’s model, in which an EPP member made a coalition with a party on its right and “they are governing that country well”.