The traditional Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) resigns from the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), partly because of the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. „Over time, this group has changed,“ it said in a statement of the HSS Bureau last night.
The HSS justified their EPP resignation mainly because Orban related business people have bought up media in Croatia, which now „spreading hatred“. She also criticized that the EPP heard only the voice of Croatia’s largest right-wing party, the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). The small Agrarian Party currently has four members in the 151-seat Croatian Parliament and one in the European Parliament.
Campaign against Juncker
Orban had launched a poster campaign in Hungary last week attacking EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker as alleged promoter of illegal migration. The posters, which show Juncker and the liberal US billionaire George Soros in unfavorable pose, had caused outrage in the ranks of the EPP and calls for an exclusion of the right-wing populist Hungarian ruling party FIDESZ.
The EPP also includes the ÖVP and the German parties CDU and CSU. Their representatives had sharply criticized Orban because of the poster campaign, but did not join the call for exclusion of FIDESZ. EPP Group leader Manfred Weber (CSU) wants to be Juncker’s successor following the European elections next May.
