Monthly Archives: March 2021

Slovakia PM offers to step down to end coalition crisis

Slovakian PM Igor Matovic has said he is willing to resign — under certain conditions — to put the country’s coalition chaos to a rest. Coalition partners have locked horns with Matovic over his COVID-19 management.

Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovic said on Sunday that he was willing to resign to end a coalition deadlock over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Matovic, who has been in power for a year, offered to step down if the partners in his four-party coalition agree to certain conditions, including a Cabinet seat for himself.

“If coalition partners meet the commitments that they have publicly declared, and that is what our demands are based on, I am willing to step down as the chairman of the Cabinet and work

as one of its members,” Matovic said in a statement to the media.

His conditions also included other party leaders in the coalition giving up their ministerial portfolios.

“To calm the situation, we consider the departure of Minister Richard Sulik from the government to be absolutely necessary,” said Matovic, talking about the economy minister and liberal SaS party leader.

Dispute over purchase of Russia’s Sputnik COVID vaccine
In response to Matovic’s demands, Sulik said he would not accept him staying on as a minister in the government.

“We will not agree with such proposals, whose main motive is obviously his (Matovic’s) personal revenge,” Sulik said.

The prime minister has been mired in a dispute with his coalition partners since he acted unilaterally and decided to buy Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine.

The decision caused an uproar among the coalition partners governing with Matovic’s OLaNO party as they wanted to wait for the European Union’s nod to the vaccine.

Junior members of the coalition have threatened to quit the government if the conservative-populist Matovic does not resign by next Wednesday, while President Zuzana Caputova, a liberal, has demanded that he find a solution.

The political upheaval comes at a time when Slovakia is battling one of the world’s highest per capita rates of coronavirus deaths and infection.

(22. 3. 2021 via dw.com)

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Bulgaria threatens to expel Russian diplomats after dismantling espionage ring

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borissov has threatened to expel Russian diplomats after Bulgarian prosecutors said they broke an espionage ring reporting to Moscow.

“Once again it could be necessary to declare Russian diplomats as unwanted. And with regards to the operation yesterday, I again address their superiors to stop spying in Bulgaria,” Borissov said.

Authorities said they arrested and charged six people among serving and retired military officials who allegedly spied for Russia.

The Prosecutor General’s spokeswoman, Siika Mileva, told reporters on Friday that “several acting and retired members of the Bulgarian armed forces have been detained on suspicion of passing classified information to a foreign state.”

“It’s the first time that an espionage group has been broken in Bulgaria,” she said. “Their criminal activity endangers our national security.”

Last year, Bulgaria expelled five Russian diplomats whom prosecutors had accused of spying, but who could not be charged because of their diplomatic immunity.

Among them was Russia’s military attaché, who had allegedly been coordinating the network in Bulgaria.

Mileva said the alleged ringleader was a former senior official in the Military Intelligence Service, who had graduated from the intelligence school in Moscow run by Russia’s GRU.

Upon his return to Bulgaria, he was allegedly tasked with recruiting a network of agents with access to classified documents linked to NATO and the European Union.

The suspect’s wife, who holds dual Bulgarian-Russian citizenship, allegedly acted as a contact person with the Russian Embassy where she handed over the documents, Mileva said.

Other alleged ring members include a senior Defense Ministry official involved in Ministry planning and budgeting; a military intelligence officer who compiled information on hybrid threats and risks, including from Russia; a military intelligence officer who had been sent to overseas missions; and a former military intelligence officer, who has served as military attaché abroad. Currently, he is in charge of the classified information registry of Parliament.

The six could face sentences from 10 years to life in prison if convicted, Mileva said.

“The investigation is crucial for the security of Bulgaria, but also for the security of our partners from the EU, NATO and the United States. This is the first such case since 1944,” Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev said.

Bulgaria, Moscow’s closest ally during the Cold War, is a member of NATO and the EU but remains heavily dependent on Russian energy supplies.

(22. 3. 2021 via euronews.com)

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US calls for Nord Stream 2 to be halted, warns of sanctions risks

Companies helping build the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany should abandon work on the project or will face sanctions, the US State Department has warned.

“Any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks U.S. sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Thursday.

He added that the Biden administration was committed to complying with 2019 and 2020 legislation with regard to the pipeline and sanctions.

The statement also said that the State Department was monitoring efforts to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and evaluating information about companies doing work on the project.

The State Department slammed the pipeline as “a Russian geopolitical project intended to divide Europe and weaken European energy security.”

A White House spokeswoman said last month that President Joe Biden considers Nord Stream 2 a “bad deal” which divides Europe, and will decide whether sanctions are needed on the project.

The United States in January moved to slap sanctions on a Russian vessel helping build Nord Stream 2, Polish website energetyka24.com reported at the time.

Nord Stream 2, designed to double the capacity of the existing Nord Stream undersea gas pipeline, is expected to send around 55 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas a year directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea while bypassing the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine.

(19. 3. 2021 via thenews.pl)

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Fidesz Quitting European People’s Party

Fidesz “no longer wishes to maintain its membership in the European People’s Party,” according to a letter posted on Twitter on Thursday by the Hungarian ruling party’s deputy head, Katalin Novák.

The letter was signed by Fidesz’s international secretariat and addressed to the Secretary-General of the EPP, Antonio Lopez-Isturiz White.

Novák, who is also Hungary’s minister in charge of family affairs, commented on Twitter saying: “It’s time to say goodbye”.

Fidesz’s MEPs quit the EPP group in the European Parliament on March 3 after the group approved its new procedural rules.

Explaining the decision, Novák wrote that in 2015, in the midst of “the migration crisis”, the EPP pegged its future to supporting migration.

“Hungarians rejected this,” she said, and insisted they did not want to “become like countries in which the effects of mass immigration had become irreversible”.

Novák said that the EPP, instead of seeking solutions to EU vaccine procurement, had quietly changed its procedural rules in order to deprive democratically elected Fidesz members of their parliamentary rights.

It had become clear, she added, that on most issues the EPP represented “left-wing values that Fidesz cannot identify with”.

“Fidesz belongs to the democratic right in Europe,” she said, adding that it was necessary now to reform it.

(19. 3. 2021 via hungarytoday.hu)

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Germany wants a ‘New Deal’ with US for democracy

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is urging a reset with the US after four years of turbulent ties with Donald Trump’s administration. Maas says both countries should work together to tackle anti-democratic threats.

Berlin hopes to strike a “New Deal” with the United States, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Tuesday, as the two countries look to mend relations after the departure of Donald Trump from the White House.

During Trump’s tenure, the US pressured Germany over its failure to meet NATO’s defense spending obligations, Berlin’s insistence on buying Russian natural gas and the EU’s trade policies.

Speaking at an online event organized by the US Brookings Institution, Maas told Americans that “Germany is at your side.” The countries should work together on democratic reforms abroad, defense and a common strategy on China and Russia, he said.

Germany’s top diplomat pointed to the coronavirus pandemic, saying it underlined why countries should work together. Closing ranks will prevent losing ground “to those who claim that authoritarian regimes can better deal with a crisis like this,” Maas said.

“We have reacted to the crackdown on civil society by Moscow and Beijing and the violations of international law by both countries,” he said.

He said he hoped that the countries would work on common positions “on targeted sanctions, something that was not possible over the last four years.”

Despite Trump’s departure, the US government still demands increased defense spending by NATO partners.

On Tuesday, Maas said Germany would “continue on the path it has taken,” having already hiked its military budget by 50% since 2014.

Berlin’s balancing act
His speech made no reference to the dispute over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea, which Washington believes will make Germany overly reliant on Russian energy.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has continued to defend the nearly completed pipeline as a commercial project to bring Russian gas to Germany. She rejected Trump’s demands to ditch it and buy liquefied gas from the United States.

At the same time, German government has tried to soothe some US concerns.
Germany recently extended its presence in Afghanistan and announced plans to sail a warship across the South China Sea, where Washington says freedom of navigation is threatened by China.

(9. 3. 2021 via dw.com)

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Commission’s Breton: ‘It’s fine’ if EU countries buy vaccines from Russia, China

Breton shrugged off EU leaders’ criticism of vaccine strategy and painted EU as the world’s vaccine savior.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot calls Thierry Breton at 5 a.m. every morning.

The pre-dawn check-in with Soriot is the first item in Breton’s daily regimen of disaster prevention checks as the head of the European Commission’s Vaccine Task Force. After Soriot calls from his home in Australia, Breton talks to Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel in Massachusetts and Pfizer’s Albert Bourla in Connecticut to hear where the bottlenecks are, and when the next batch of EU doses are coming.

Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, is now the face of Europe’s vaccine frenzy, which has him crisscrossing the Continent in search of new production sites after AstraZeneca fell far short of its first-quarter deliveries to the EU.

So far he has visited Thermo Fisher Scientific, an AstraZeneca subcontractor; Lonza, a Moderna subcontractor; Pfizer’s Puurs site, a vaccine production powerhouse; and now Halix, an AstraZeneca subcontractor in the Netherlands that’s still causing confusion over whether it ever made a dose for the EU.

Now with vaccine solidarity crumbling and several national capitals turning abroad for jabs, Breton has added EU governments to his itinerary. After stopping in the Netherlands on Wednesday, he went to Italy on Thursday to discuss the government’s plans to make more coronavirus vaccines. Next he will go to Hungary and Austria on Friday, both of which have been increasingly critical of the EU’s vaccination strategy — and are eyeing doses elsewhere.

The point, Breton told POLITICO in an interview on Wednesday, is to keep manufacturers in line and capitals aligned with Brussels’ vaccine strategy despite the sluggish rollout.

“I’m making sure that our governments and our members are aligned with our strategy, and they are,” insisted Breton. “But it’s important for me to spend some time with each of them to make sure that we are all aligned, and we will continue to be aligned.”

The Commission has spent the past month trying to prove it’s in control by revamping its vaccine strategy and pointing to progress on the horizon with a fourth vaccine from Johnson & Johnson possibly coming next week, along with reports of better quarter two projections from producers. At least in one positive case, Germany sent some 15,000 doses to harder-hit Czech Republic.

All of this hasn’t placated restless capitals, however, who are eager to show citizens that they’re fighting for every vial. Austria, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia have all joined Hungary in looking to other countries for doses.

But Breton isn’t worried. If countries want to purchase Russia’s Sputnik V or China’s Sinopharm, “it’s fine.”

The French government on Friday struck a different tone, with European Affairs Minister Clément Beaune criticizing EU countries that have been eyeing the Russian or Chinese jab. “I think that would be a serious [problem],” Beaune told French radio station RTL. “It would be an issue in terms of solidarity and a public health issue because [these vaccines] are not approved in Europe.”

Breton on the other hand even welcomed moves from Austria and Denmark to form a vaccine alliance with Israel — ignoring the Austrian chancellor’s targeted criticism that the EU is too slow.

“I have absolutely no fear that this is against anyone — it’s just to enhance global cooperation,” he said. He’ll know more on Friday, he added, after meeting with Chancellor Sebastian Kurz himself.

For now, Breton is busy making sure everyone knows it’s the EU’s vaccine strategy that is set to make real change around the bloc.

When asked about Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic’s interest in Russian and Chinese vaccines, Breton made it sound like any doses those countries receive are just a drop in the ocean. It makes sense that “somebody is willing to have maybe a few doses here, a few doses there,” he said. “What we need today is doses,” he said. “Not new vaccines.”

He pointed to Russia’s first delivery of Sputnik doses to Hungary, which totaled about 40,000 doses. “It’s 40,000,” he said. “We need millions.”

It’s thanks to EU orders that EU countries will receive those millions of doses, Breton insists. “I know that for volumes, it will come from Europe — it will come from here.”

Mr. Europe
Breton has no reason to doubt the effectiveness of the Sputnik V vaccine, considering Russia’s long history of scientific expertise: “We’ll see if it’s a good vaccine,” he said, after regulators at the European Medicines Agency thoroughly review the data. The EMA announced a rolling review for the two-dose adenovirus vaccine on Thursday.

The problem for Sputnik is that Russia can’t mass produce it — aside from the fact that many Russians don’t want it.

China has also been using and sending abroad its coronavirus vaccines from Sinopharm and Sinovac. The country has vaccinated more than 50 million of its citizens, slightly more than the EU in terms of sheer numbers but less in terms of population percentage. It aims to vaccinate 40 percent of its population by the end of July, shy of targets set by both the U.S. and the EU.

Russia and China might be eager to send their doses around the world, including to EU countries, but Breton is clear: Only the EU and the U.S. have the capacity to supply the globe.

“Most countries do not have the capacity to deliver massively,” Breton said. The EU, therefore, has “the responsibility” to help.

Breton also shrugged off Austria and Denmark’s new vaccine alliance with Israel. The two EU leaders went to the country on Thursday to iron out the details. At a press conference, the three countries said they agreed to form a new foundation to work on drug research and development, as well as jointly investing in vaccine production.

Before the announcement Thursday, Kurz’s office described the effort to Breton as merely a research partnership. That’s more than fine with Breton, who said the world and Israel can benefit from Europe’s top-notch research labs.

“We encourage … cooperation with the U.S., we encourage cooperation with Israel, with anybody who would like to have cooperation with our scientific labs — that’s extremely important,” he said. “I understand it is in this direction that they have been invited.”

What it isn’t, Breton insisted, is a sign EU countries have lost confidence with the Commission — overlooking Kurz’s slamming of the bloc earlier this week as “too slow” and calling on Austria to look beyond the EU for vaccines.

“We are in a global world,” Breton continued. “So it’s absolutely normal that the chancellor said we cannot rely only on European vaccines, because we don’t.”

“But one thing is certain,” he added. “The only continents able to produce what is needed for their citizens, and for the planet, are Europe and the U.S.”

The EU will be able to make between 2 billion and 3 billion doses by the end of 2021 — far more vaccines than it needs. Breton is also confident the EU will have enough doses to vaccinate 70 percent of adults by the end of the summer.

“As a former CEO myself, I know that we still have a lot of challenges, that it’s always difficult to project the capacity of a factory 100 percent,” he said. “But I’m confident with the progress I see on the ground.”

This target, combined with U.S. President Joe Biden’s pledge that every American adult will get a vaccine by May, would mean that roughly 10 percent of the world’s population could be vaccinated by the end of 2021 — possibly sooner.

All for one?
Rich countries, including the EU, are standing in the way of developing countries’ access to shots, however.

The EU has thrown €1 billion at COVAX, a scheme designed to supply vaccines to low- and middle-income countries. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has criticized wealthy countries for snatching up doses, leaving COVAX with little to buy.

If anything, the EU looks poised for more. The EMA is in the process of auditing the Serum Institute of India, long seen as the main vaccine producer for poorer countries, to authorize it to send doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to the EU.

Despite the EU’s “responsibility” to help low- and middle-income countries, Breton said the EU isn’t to blame for this. The bloc isn’t requesting that SII actually produce for the EU — even if he has an opportunity to raise the issue with Soriot every morning. Rather, it’s up to AstraZeneca “to decide how they want to organize themselves, and to negotiate within their own networks to fulfill their commitment with the EU. That’s it.”

“The EU has a contract with AstraZeneca, and AstraZeneca has a global worldwide network,” Breton said. “It is their duty and their task to do what they must do to fulfill their commitments.”

Breton, meanwhile, is still learning the lay of the land. The Halix plant he visited on Wednesday still isn’t approved to actually make drug substance for EU-marked doses, although a representative from the EMA was on site during Breton’s visit.

The regulator confirmed Thursday that the Halix plant is still not listed to supply drug substance to the bloc, saying it wouldn’t comment on whether it’s being inspected so it can be added soon. The Commission and AstraZeneca have not responded to questions from POLITICO about whether the plant is under review.

There has been speculation that Halix only got up to speed by the end of 2020, and sent those doses to the U.K. Breton says he didn’t know about this arrangement. He confirmed that the Dutch plant has been able to make at least 5 to 6 million doses monthly since the end of 2020, but didn’t have information as to whether the plant exported jabs across the Channel.

Since the EU implemented an export control on vaccines, however, “everything has stayed in the bloc,” he said, adding that a “significant part” of what Halix makes will go to its countries.

The EU’s export controls were in the spotlight again on Thursday after Italy blocked a shipment of 250,000 Oxford/AstraZeneca doses bound for Australia — a move that got the Commission’s sign-off.

Breton will now start adding new CEOs to his morning calls, including Johnson & Johnson’s, as soon as that vaccine gets European regulators’ green-light, expected on March 11.

In any case, his job won’t be over anytime soon.

“If you ever have a vaccine with enough doses,” Breton said. “I think everybody would be happy.” But this won’t happen soon: He’s already preparing manufacturers to get ready to fight the next pandemic.

(4. 3. 2021 via politico.eu)

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Czech officials in Prague ‘hit by massive cyber attack’

Czech officials in Prague have been hit by a large-scale cyberattack, according to the city’s mayor.

“There has been a massive cyber attack on public administration systems,” Zdeněk Hřib tweeted, adding that the servers had “survived” and there was little damage. An immediate outage was made on the email system to maintain security.

“Thanks to the storage of multiple copies of data at once, we did not damage the data,” Hřib said.

On Friday morning, he confirmed that the city’s emails were working and that there was no need to recover data from backup systems.

“It seems that we also managed to warn the city districts in time,” Hřib added.

The attack has been reported to the Czech Republic National Cyber and Information Agency (NUKIB), and Hřib said the city would provide “full cooperation” with the investigation.

The Czech Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Jana Maláčová, told the Czech media that the ministry had also been targeted, without giving further details.

In a statement, the NUKIB confirmed that they were working with the organisations that had been affected. There is no indication yet who carried out the cyber attacks.

“NUKIB, together with other partners, including the National Center against Organised Crime, is currently helping the affected organisations to address this situation and minimize the extent of damage,” the agency said.

“However, we will not provide more detailed information on the extent of the incident or the affected entities.”

The agency said they had previously identified “serious vulnerabilities” affecting Microsoft Exchange Server, which could allow email accounts to be accessed remotely.

Microsoft has warned that these vulnerabilities are currently being actively exploited, the NUKIB said.

“We recommend that anyone who runs an Exchange server in these versions update immediately, especially if the server is accessible from the Internet.”

In the last year, several cyber attacks have hit state organisations in the Czech Republic, including Prague airport or hospitals.

(5. 3. 2021 via euronews.com)

FM Szijjártó in Slovakia: ‘Dual Citizenship Should Not Be Feared’

Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister, expressed hope that the issue of dual citizenship would sometime in future be resolved in Slovakia, after talks in Révkomárom (Komarno) on Wednesday.

Szijjártó held talks with Béla Keszegh, the local mayor and board member of the Party of the Hungarian Community in Slovakia, and György Gyimesi, member of the Slovak National Council.

“The option of dual citizenship, it seems at the moment, is not ensured in Slovakia,” Szijjártó said after the meeting which also addressed the citizenship issue.

“Dual citizenship is a legal instrument that exists across Europe, an institution which should not be feared,” he said.

“We would like to discuss this issue with Slovakia, a strategic partner for Hungary, rationally and on the ground of mutual respect,” Szijjártó said, calling the neighbouring country’s Hungarian community an important link in bilateral ties. He called on Slovakia’s Hungarians to participate at the ongoing national census and declare their ethnicity.

Concerning the coronavirus epidemic, Szijjártó said that the Slovak government had asked for his help in putting their officials in contact with Russian and Chinese partners during talks on purchasing Covid-19 vaccines from those two countries.

He said the Hungarian government was also sending 27 ventillators to 13 hospitals in southern Slovakia where a large Hungarian community lives.

(4. 3. 2021 via hungarytoday.hu)

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Orbán: EPP Became “Annexe of the European Left”

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in a “samizdat” letter published on his website on Thursday, slammed the European People’s Party for “indulging itself in power games” while the rest of Europe fights “a life-and-death battle” against the coronavirus pandemic.

“While we here in Hungary — and other leaders in their own countries — are literally fighting a life-and-death battle against the coronavirus, the EPP is indulging itself in power games within the bubble of bureaucrats in Brussels,” the prime minister wrote. “This is unacceptable.”

Orbán noted that Fidesz’s MEPs have left the EPP’s European Parliamentary group, refusing to accept “that the rights of Members of the European Parliament — and thus the rights of Hungarian voters — be restricted by an amendment of the Group’s statutes”.

The prime minister said the departure of Fidesz’s MEPs from the EPP group also opened up a “new perspective” in European politics.

Orbán said Hungarians had “wanted to return the EPP — which is in continuous retreat, jettisoning its political values, as if from a sinking airship — to its former position as Europe’s leading intellectual and political force”. The aim, he said, had been to once again make the conservative grouping “a large, strong, democratic formation of the right, which could bring together centrist, conservative and traditional Christian democratic parties and their voters into a great shared political home”.

But Orbán said this opportunity “was lost” on Wednesday and the EPP had become “an annexe of the European left”, meaning that there was “no longer any difference” on key issues like migration, family values and national sovereignty between itself and the left wing.

“There is good reason for parties on the European left and their leaders to light bonfires in celebration: they have expanded their numbers with the addition of another party,” he added.

Now, he said, Fidesz’s task was to help build a new European democratic right wing “that offers a home to European citizens who do not want migrants, who do not want multiculturalism, who have not descended into LGBTQ lunacy, who defend Europe’s Christian traditions, who respect the sovereignty of nations, and who see their nations not as part of their past, but as part of their future”.

(4. 3. 2021 via hungarytoday.hu)

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Orbán walkout shakes up European (political) family drama

Hungarian PM’s move ends one chapter, but saga is far from over.

Viktor Orbán’s relationship with his European Parliament family finally reached breaking point.

After years of tension and procrastination over their enfant terrible, many members of the European People’s Party (EPP) breathed a sigh of relief when the Hungarian prime minister on Wednesday jumped before he was pushed out of the EPP group in the Parliament.

Orbán announced that MEPs from his Fidesz party were quitting the center-right group — the largest bloc in the Parliament — soon after it approved a rule change that paved the way for them to be suspended from its ranks.

To the EPP’s critics, the separation was long overdue. They have accused the EPP of turning a blind eye for years while the Hungarian government rolled back democracy, human rights and the rule of law, Orbán regularly assailed EU institutions and Fidesz embraced far-right populism.

Fidesz angrily rejected those charges while EPP leaders argued for years that theirs was a broad alliance, and that it was better to try to keep Orbán’s troops inside the camp than have them move further to the right and attack from outside.

The question for both Orbán and the EPP now is whether the rupture benefits or damages them in the long term.

In the short term, both lose something. The EPP group is deprived of 12 MEPs (although one Fidesz member was already suspended). It remains comfortably the largest in the Parliament but the Fidesz departure comes on top of losses at the last European elections.

Fidesz, for its part, loses its place inside a large, influential and wealthy political force that has given it a platform to advance its interests on the European stage.

Publicly, EPP group leaders played down talk of victory and defeat. But they noted the rule change was overwhelmingly backed by the group’s MEPs — a statement that suggested Fidesz had become isolated.

“I am very happy that the EPP group is so united,” group leader Manfred Weber told reporters. “I don’t see winners and losers, and I even would say that I regret that we are losing colleagues in the EPP family.”

A total of 148 MEPs voted in favor of the new rules, while just 28 voted against. Orbán responded quickly with a letter, saying that his group would leave the EPP because the vote was “clearly a hostile move against Fidesz and our voters.”

Tensions between Fidesz and other, more centrist, members of the EPP have been simmering for years. Fidesz has been suspended from membership of the EPP party alliance since March 2019. But its MEPs remained part of the EPP group in the European Parliament, despite moves by some to kick them out.

However, many EPP lawmakers, even some previously in favor of keeping Fidesz MEPs in their ranks, eventually grew tired of what they saw as repeated attacks on both the EPP’s values and its leaders.

The pivotal players in Wednesday’s drama were Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU) — the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — and their Bavarian CSU allies, who had long been reluctant to act against Fidesz but backed the rule change.

Weber said on Wednesday it was “clear” that Fidesz had moved away from the values of the EPP’s founding fathers, including former German Christian Democratic Chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl.

“They moved away from the EPP, we did not,” Weber declared.

Fidesz faces choice
It remains to be seen whether others are tempted to move away from the EPP too. Several Parliament officials suggested that MEPs who voted against the new rules on Wednesday could follow in Orbán’s footsteps.

Among the dissenters were members of the Slovenian Democratic Party of Prime Minister Janez Janša and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party. They and other malconents would, however, have to weigh up the loss of clout that would come from leaving the EPP group, even if they feel an affinity with Fidesz.

The next chapter in this political family drama will likely come if Fidesz is expelled from the EPP party umbrella. Or if, once again, Fidesz decides to walk out before the EPP can make such a move.

Fidesz MEP Tamás Deutsch said that while there is a possibility that the party will remain inside the EPP, the course of events points “in the opposition direction.”

Nevertheless, he also noted that new CDU leader Armin Laschet’s comments on Fidesz are “very different in tone” from those of the EPP’s leadership. Laschet has so far avoided saying whether he favors excluding Fidesz from the EPP.

The European Parliament has been rife with talk that Fidesz has been discussing alliances with groups that are critical of the EU, including the European Conservatives and Reformists and the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group.

Jörg Meuthen, a leader of the Alternative for Germany party and leading member of the ID group, said it was clear Orbán and his party belonged in their ranks.

“That is apparent in questions such as migration, identity and national sovereignty,” Meuthen said in a statement. “Fidesz was always the conservative fig leaf of a fake-conservative EPP.”

But Balázs Hidvégi, a Fidesz MEP who acts as the party’s spokesperson in the Parliament, said it was too early to talk about what would happen in the future.

“Fidesz is and has been a dedicated pro-European party,” he said. “We are not Euroskeptic, we are not critical of Europe, but of the Brussels bureaucracy.”

EPP ‘moderation’
For the EPP, Wednesday’s move offered leaders the chance to claim that they had brought ideological clarity to the group, after years of trying to bridge the gap between Europhile centrists and others who felt closer to the nationalist, anti-migration line of Orbán.

During an EPP debate prior to the vote on Wednesday, Esteban González Pons, an EPP vice president who oversaw his group’s work on the new membership rules, warned MEPs that the adoption of the rules “preserved the unity” of the group. He said if MEPs did not adopt them “it would have been the end of the EPP,” according to one participant to the meeting.

González Pons told reporters later in the day that with the new rules, the group had chosen “moderation instead of radicalism,” and “compromise instead of intolerance.”

But the EPP’s opponents did not give the party much credit. They accused the EPP of having been much too lenient for too long in the face of increasingly autocratic tendencies from Orbán.

“It is regrettable the EPP have harboured the slide to authoritarianism in Hungary for so long,” Dacian Cioloş, leader of the centrist Renew Europe group in the Parliament said in a statement. “Under Orbán, Fidesz has eroded democracy in Hungary and vandalised European values …There is no space for the toxic populism of Fidesz in mainstream European politics.”

Iratxe Garcia, the leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats group, said Fidesz “should have been kicked out years ago.”

“Instead, the EPP Group sat by and watched while Orbán’s anti-democratic government attacked European citizens’ freedoms again and again,” Garcia added.

(3. 3. 2021 via politico.eu)

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