Attempts by Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán to address MEPs at the inaugural plenary sitting of the newly elected assembly in Strasbourg have been rebuffed by parliamentary chiefs unable to find room to accommodate him in the agenda, two sources familiar with the issue have told Euronews.
By long-standing convention, heads of government are given the opportunity to address the Parliament when they take over the rotating presidency of the EU Council, presenting the agenda for their six-month turn at the helm of inter-governmental policy negotiations and answering questions from MEPs.
The sources said Orbán had indicated to the parliament that he could appear before the plenary on Tuesday or Wednesday (16-17 July) next week to present the agenda of the Hungarian presidency, which Budapest has given the slogan ‘Make Europe Great Again’.
Pardon my ignorance, but why was Hungary added to the EU in the first place? How did it ever get to this point?
Because Hungary had been strongly social democratic basically since WW2 (though much of that was behind the iron curtain), and they’d been hugely improving up to their entrance to the union, with only a little mistake of electing Orban once, before going back to a sane Premier.
And then 2010 arrived, and the entire country took a swing Hard Right and down shit street, but by that time they were already in.
I’ll just add that Fidesz (the right wing governing party) started out centrist in 1990. In 2010 they’d moved towards the right, but in a lot people’s minds they were one of the big, reasonable parties since the end of Soviet control. And also just in general “the opposition”.
The social democratic governing party also was inept and admitted as such (see Őszöd sleech).
So what happened was the left side of the spectrum lost all support, and what in many people’s minds was the centrist or centre-right opposition picked it all up. Just over half the votes gave them a supermajority and from that point they gradually attained complete control over all institutions as a result.
The EU countries in general just cannot get over the right wing tendancies and xenophobia of which they are a deep cause. By exploiting developing countries and shitting toxins into the environment we make their countries worth fleeing from, and where else to flee than prosperous countries. They are only following the wealth that was extracted from their countries.
Our reaction is to act surprised and say “no room here, we’re struggling too”, after having voted for parties that will take the wealth and move it upwards away from the common people. So instead of using our “superior” education to vote for parties that want to redistribute wealth, we vote populist - people who find scapegoats in the poor. “Immigrants are the problem!”, “Leftists are the problem”.
Lol, sure
Are you ignorant or just unwilling to accept that the cheap products you buy are made by children, minorities, and people living in abject poverty? Do you not know about the workers of fast fashion or are you just blissfully unaware? Have you never heard of the cobalt mines in Congo? Or are you conveniently ignoring it to buy yet another smartphone that will end up in a landfill in Asia because we ship our trash there?
Or do you just not give a fuck because you have to “take of me first”? Fuck the brown people right? Fuck the poors of other nations. They were born to make products for us, right? They have no right to try and flee the conditions we helped create and continue to create. They should just accept their fate and die as teenagers in mine while citizens of their age in exploiting countries can enjoy tiktok.
Except they weren’t democratic at all: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulash_Communism
Please update the comment.
We in Europe have a similar problem in Slovakia at the moment with PM Fico with a similar autocratic (and pro-Russian) approach. Europe will have to adapt to the rise of the extremists from the right (and soon from the left too?) and other global development.
You are in good company. We are trying to fight off the yoke that autocrats are planning for our own country. Bastards just don’t know when to quit.