Fidesz confirms party’s MEPs have quit EPP group

Gal and Deutsch told MTI that it was “unacceptable” that the EPP group had launched “hasty administrative manoeuvers” during the coronavirus epidemic that was “claiming the lives of thousands of European citizens every day, putting unprecedented pressure on our citizens and economies.”

The Fidesz MEPs said they had stated their legal and political concerns on several occasions, but the final version of the amendment to the EPP statutes was still unsatisfactory. The change in rules that would allow a simple majority to oust a whole party group from the EPP group would prevent Fidesz MEPs from exercising their parliamentary rights, they added.

The Fidesz MEPs said the democratic will of almost 2 million Hungarians who backed Fidesz in the European elections “must be respected fully”. This means the rights of their elected representatives must not be curbed or revoked, they added.

Gal and Deutsch said in their statement that handling political differences bureaucratically was “anti-democratic and unworthy” of the EPP party group.

The EPP group voted on Wednesday to change the group’s statutes to make it possible to suspend the membership of a whole group, not just individual MEP members, or to terminate membership collectively if the party group’s rules were seriously breached.

Katalin Novak, a deputy leader of Fidesz, has slammed the EPP group’s vote to amend its statutes, saying it would curb the ability of her party’s MEPs to exercise their parliamentary rights.

“Thousands of people are dying in the European Union on a daily basis,” Novak said on Facebook. “And yet the European People’s Party’s parliamentary group is focused on limiting Fidesz MEPs’ room for manoeuvre.”

Novak, who is Hungary’s minister without portfolio for family affairs, noted that Fidesz decided to “put an end to the disagreements” and leave the EPP group after the umbrella party approved an amendment to its statutes that would allow MEPs to be removed from the group en-bloc with a simple majority.

Novak also shared a letter by Prime Minister Viktor Orban addressed to Manfred Weber, the EPP’s group leader, on Fidesz’s decision to leave the group.

In his capacity as Fidesz leader, Orban said he was disappointed to witness “the EPP group paralysed by internal administrative matters and busy silencing … democratically elected Europeans, while hundreds of thousands of Europeans are hospitalised…”

He called the change in rules “a clearly hostile step towards our voters and Fidesz”.

“This is anti-democratic, unfair and unacceptable.” The governing body of Fidesz, he added, “has decided to leave the EPP group in the European Parliament immediately.”

Orban added that Fidesz MEPs would continue “to speak for those voters they represent and defend the interests of the Hungarian people.”

Justice Minister Judit Varga said EPP head Manfred Weber should have kept the party group together rather than weakening it. Varga said in a Facebook post that while Europe was facing “one of the greatest challenges in its history” in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, the EPP was “preoccupied with exclusion and political discrimination”.

Varga said Fidesz’s long-time disagreement with the party family started because Weber “does not want to lead … [the EPP according to] Christian-Conservative values”. “He made this clear when he said that national sovereignty no longer exists.”

Varga said Fidesz believed in preserving the country’s “thousand-year-old culture” while cooperating with European countries.

“In these hard times we should work on saving lives and relaunching the economy, not on the internal affairs of the parties in the European Parliament,” she added.

Fidesz MEP Balazs Hidveghi said the EPP was shifting to the left and “losing its character”. The EPP should return to the concept of “Europe of Nations” and accept Christian Democratic values as a part of European politics, he said. Fidesz thinks it is “unacceptable” that the EPP had changed its regulations so that it could “silence” a group of MEPs, he told Hungarian journalists in Brussels.

KDNP to remain in EPP

Hungary’s allied ruling Christian Democrat (KDNP) party will remain a member of the European People’s Party group after the MEPs of senior governing party Fidesz announced to leave the group on Wednesday.

Gyorgy Holvenyi, KNDP’s only MEP currently serving in the European Parliament, told MTI that the party joined the predecessor of the EPP, the European Union of Christian Democrats, in the early 1990s.

The amendments of the EPP’s statutes, which the EPP adopted earlier in the day, do not “present a legal issue to KNDP and do not strip the party of positions it is holding”, Holvenyi said.

He said the party would continue to work for the cause of religious freedom, for persecuted Christians, for interreligious dialogue and for the advancement of European development policy.

Fidesz issued a statement on Wednesday saying that its 12 MEPs will leave the EPP after an amendment to the umbrella party’s rules was approved at a group meeting.

The Fidesz MEPs said they had stated their legal and political concerns on several occasions, but the final version of the amendment to the EPP statutes was still unsatisfactory. The change in rules that would allow a simple majority to oust a whole party group from the EPP group would prevent Fidesz MEPs from exercising their parliamentary rights, they added.

The EPP group voted on Wednesday to change the group’s statutes to make it possible to suspend the membership of a whole group, not just individual MEP members, or to terminate membership collectively if the party group’s rules were seriously breached.