After the controversial poster campaign against EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban strives to smooth the waves.
As Hungarian media reported on Thursday, two Orban confidants – Chancellery Minister Gergely Gulyas and former Social Affairs Minister Zoltan Balog – met in Berlin with CDU chief Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. The EU Commission, meanwhile, rejected the claims of the poster campaign sharply.
The CDU in Berlin confirmed the meeting with the deputy chairman of the Fidesz party, Gulyas. Kramp-Karrenbauer had called on Fidesz to credibly prove that they felt that they were more committed to the shared values of the EPP and the common objectives of work in the European Parliament. She had already announced in the CDU federal executive on Monday, the clear and coordinated dissociation of CDU and CSU from the poster campaign of the Hungarian government in a direct conversation to make clear.
The „world“ journalist Robin Alexander previously reported on the meeting on Twitter. Accordingly, the Orban confidants sought the conversation with Kramp-Karrenbauer to avert the exclusion of the Hungarian ruling party Fidesz from the conservative European People’s Party. These also belong to CDU and CSU.
Since last week, posters hung in Hungary depicting Juncker and the liberal US billionaire of Hungarian descent, George Soros, in unfavorable pose. Among them are allegations that suggest both wanted to promote illegal migration to Hungary. Juncker had been elected as the leading candidate of the EPP Commission President. In the EPP then voices were heard to exclude the Fidesz party from the party family. This was not joined by leading Union politicians in Germany.
In light of the campaign, the European Commission published a four-page paper on Thursday that contradicts the claims of the Fidesz campaign. „We agree that people deserve to know the truth,“ said a spokeswoman for the Brussels authorities. The paper states: „The truth is that there is no conspiracy.“ The Hungarian Government’s allegations are, in the worst case, in fact completely false and at best highly misleading. „And none of that has anything to do with George Soros.“
Then the paper goes into each claim point by point. It makes it clear that the admission of migrants from outside the EU is voluntary for each EU country; that the EU does not undermine national border protection, but supports it; that the EU Commission has no plans for humanitarian visas and that it is up to every single EU state whether it wants to allow the immigration of qualified immigrants. The College of Commissioners has concluded – including the Hungarian representative Tibor Navracsics, who is itself a Fidesz member – decided to this answer, said the spokeswoman.
The opposition daily Nepszava reported on Thursday, citing Fidesz circles, that Orban’s ambassadors in Berlin had made „minimal progress“ with Kramp-Karrenbauer. According to ATV private broadcaster, an EPP exclusion from Fidesz will be off the table until the European elections in May.
The two Christian Democratic parties in Belgium and the Christian Democrats in Luxembourg on Thursday, however, demanded in a letter to the EPP President Joseph Daul, Fidesz exclude from the party family. This was announced by the leaders of the two Belgian parties, Wouter Beke and Maxime Prevot, on Twitter. Orban’s excesses had become unbearable, Prevot wrote.
