Orban’s first move to take tough stance over refugees
HUNGARY’S ruling Fidesz party will look to capitalise on a crushing election victory last weekend by enacting new laws to curb the rights of civic groups that support refugees, senior party figures said yesterday.
The promise to move swiftly against international NGOS highlighted the growing EU divisions over Viktor Orbán, the prime minister, who has repeatedly attacked Brussels for its handling of the 2015 refugee crisis and the imposition of mandatory migrant quotas.
As Mr Orbán promised to push ahead with reforms, his campaign was criticised as “xenophobic” by official international election monitors yesterday after Mr Orbán demonised refugees as “Muslim invaders” and warned of a Jewish conspiracy to dilute Hungary’s Christian identity. The final vote count confirmed Mr Orbán had won a 134seat “supermajority” in Hungary’s 199seat assembly, opening the door to the so-called Stop Soros laws named after George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who was targeted in the campaign. The laws are aimed at outlawing foreign funding of NGOS.
“Voters had a wide range of political options, but intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias and opaque campaign financing constricted the space for genuine political debate,” said the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Confirmation of 54-year-old Mr Orbán’s third term in office drew sharply divided responses across Europe where the Hungarian prime minister is seen in some quarters as a serious threat to liberal democracy. Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the liberal ALDE group in the European Parliament called Mr Orbán’s campaign “vile”, attacking Manfred Weber, the head of the conservative EPP grouping, for offering congratulations to Mr Orbán.
Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, warned that unless big EU countries like France and Germany did more to confront Mr Orbán, the bloc faced trouble. “Today, it is Hungary and Poland, tomorrow others in eastern and central Europe, even a big founding country of the EU, could develop a taste for undermining values and scaremongering,” he said.
But despite widespread misgivings about Mr Orbán’s growing capture of the Hungarian state through media ownership and other changes to the law, the victory was acknowledged by the major western EU powers.
Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, sent “congratulations”, adding that the UK looked forward to “working with our Hungarian friends”.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said her nation would be a “reliable partner” to Hungary, despite differences on migration, a spokesman said.
France said it would continue to pursue “political dialogue in the service of the European project and its values”.
The European Commission was more guarded. Jean-claude Juncker, its president, was scheduled to call Mr Orbán while noting that the EU was a “union of democracies” whose values needed to be defended by all member states “without exception”.
Populist leaders across Europe hailed Mr Orbán’s victory, including France’s Marine Le Pen, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, who said the Hungarian leader was the “EU’S biggest nightmare”.
Regional analysts said that EU leaders had to work with Mr Orbán, even though his increasingly autocratic approach was undermining attempts to reunite the EU club after Brexit.