Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s address to the European Parliament stressing the need to control illegal immigration sparked a full-scale meltdown from leftist and globalist factions in Strasbourg.
Laying out some of the top priorities for Budapest while it controls the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union, borrowing from former President Donald Trump the slogan “Make Europe Great Again”, Prime Minister Orbán focussed heavily on the issue of immigration, saying that the “EU’s asylum system does not work today”.
Orbán argued that the open borders agenda favoured by Brussels has resulted in a rise in antisemitism, homophobia and violence against women across Europe. The Hungarian leader claimed that the “only solution” to the migrant crisis would be to only allow asylum seekers who were “given permission in advance” to enter the bloc.
Similar to the “Remain in Mexico” policy of the Trump administration, Orbán called for the EU to establish migrant “hotspots” in third party countries to handle asylum requests offshore.
“Since 2015, Hungary and I have been engaged in serious political debates on this matter. So far all attempts have been unsuccessful. We don’t know without external hotspots.
“Once we let someone in, we won’t be able to send them home,” he said per 24.hu.
Finally, Orbán called for the creation of regular Schengen Summits, in which member states could discuss new ways to improve border controls.
While the speech represented fairly standard fare for Orbán, and indeed for many conservatives throughout Europe, globalist and leftist factions in Strasbourg broke out into hysterical rants, accusing the prime minister of being a “dictator”, of allegedly being in the pocket of Beijing and Moscow, and for supposedly violating EU law by enacting restrictions on transgenderism in child entertainment in Hungary.
During his speech, Social Democratic MEPs held up signs reading “Democrats, not autocrats”. After the Hungarian leader concluded his remarks, leftists burst out a rendition of the anti-fascist song “Bella Ciao”.
German Green Party politician Daniel Freund called Orbán “Mr. Dictator”, and asserted that he is the most corrupt politician in Europe. In another unhinged outburst, Bulgarian leftist MEP Klára Dobrev asked Orbán: “Answer the question, what are the Russians blackmailing you with?”
In uncharacteristically strong language and tone, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen joined in on the act of attacking the Hungarian leader, particularly criticising him for continually advocating for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
“There are still some who blame this war not on the invader but on the invaded. Not on Putin’s lust for power but on Ukraine’s thirst for freedom,” the European Commission president said.
Looking at Orbán, she continued: “I want to ask them… Would they ever blame the Hungarians for the Soviet invasion of 1956? Or the Czechs and Slovaks for the Soviet repression of 1968? Or the Lithuanians for the Soviet crackdown of 1991?”
Von der Leyen went on to accuse Hungary of pushing the problem of illegal immigration onto other EU nations by refusing to accept the illegal migrant redistribution scheme and claimed that the only means of confronting the issue would be “more” European cooperation. The comments from the German politician come as she is seeking a second term in the top post in Brussels.
The meltdown by leftist and globalist politicians was pre-empted by a disruption of remarks from Orbán in Strasbourg on Tuesday by a Hungarian political activist who began shouting down his prime minister within the chamber. The 19-year-old later said that it was his intention to “overthrow Viktor Orbán’s regime”.
Responding to the antics of the EU parliamentarians on Wednesday, Mr Orbán said: “In the past, the commission was a neutral institution, but now it has been turned into a political body.”
The Hungarian leader went on to mock the group criticising him, noting that among their ranks as an MEP is Italian Antifa activist Ilaria Salis, who was accused of attacking people with a hammer in Budapest but was ultimately freed from prison after being elected to the EU Parliament. Orbán questioned: “And here you give us a lecture on the rule of law?”
He went on to describe the attacks on his government for supposedly being authoritarian as “absurd”, noting that earlier this year a political conference in Brussels he attended was shut down by police in the heart of the EU.
The outburst from the left on Wednesday was also criticised by allies of Orbàn, including Polish MEP Tomasz Buczek, who remarked: “For them, democracy is only democracy when their favourites win.” Turning to the Hungarian PM, Buczek added: “Don’t give up and let there be a ray of sunshine on the map of Europe.”
Czech MEP Klara Dostalova said: “The motto of the Hungarian presidency is: let’s make Europe great again, and we agree with that,” adding that Hungary is not the problem in Europe, rather it presents the solution.
