Two years ago, the European Parliament’s largest center-right bloc, the European People’s Party, suspended membership in Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz. Last week saw the end of the war when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced that his party would leave the PPE for good. The establishment of Washington’s foreign policy naturally pleased the result: its members equated any expression of populism or national conservatism with “extremism.”
And, in fact, Fidesz’s departure from the EPP had something to do with extremism: the extremism of a Eurocratic elite that long ago abandoned its own Christian democratic ideals in favor of a globalist ideology. hard that it does not design any discrepancy and has no place for the concerns of ordinary voters in Central and Eastern Europe: faith, family and national dignity.
For the peoples of the post-Soviet bloc, such as Hungarians and Poles, rejoining the European political family after more than four decades of communist occupation was an exceptional opportunity. We sought allies who shared the core values we believe underpin the prosperity and decency of Western civilization.
Then we had a rude awakening. It turned out that the so-called main center-right and center-left parties paid little more than lip service – if that – to sovereignty and self-determination, the diversity of nations, the traditional family and the Judeo-Christian foundations of Europe. As we tackled the liberal and globalist line from Brussels and Washington, we were accepted. But as soon as we democratically chose a different path, we were told that they were “undemocratic.”
Orbán, the only democratically most popular leader in Europe, has been considered worse. However, all its decisions that have angered the “mainstream” of the Euro, including the leadership of the EPP, were pragmatic solutions to real problems, solutions that were also more faithful to the legacy of the founding fathers. of the EU than anything the Eurocrats offered. .
Think of illegal migration, a permanent flash point since 2015, at least. Orbán, almost alone among center-right leaders, called for action to do what the treaties oblige us to do: protect our territorial sovereignty. Europe has asylum laws, which the liberal nations of northern and western Europe evaded to attract more than a million unrecognized newcomers from the Middle East and Africa. There was chaos, terror and massive social incohesion.
Most average Europeans take it for granted that it was crazy to open the doors of the continent and Western politicians with a minimum of courage and common sense are willing to admit it publicly. However, Eurocrats and their speakers in the mainstream media called Hungarian fascists and xenophobes simply to insist on the borders and principles of sovereignty enshrined in EU law.
Or adopt family policy. The Hungarian government offers generous subsidies to promote marriage, family formation and motherhood, to prevent demographic collapse and to ensure that there are future workers and taxpayers who support the aging population. In ten years, the number of marriages has doubled and the demographic decline has begun to reverse. (Compare this to France, whose birth rate is at its lowest point since 1945.)
Thanks to a recent amendment, the constitution also defines marriage, as most civilizations in most of human history have ordered, such as the union of man and woman, for raising children. The governments of Germany and France may disagree with this. But is it not the right of the Hungarian people to make this determination, as did an overwhelming majority of their duly elected representatives in the vote to amend the constitution?
These positions have also opened Hungary up to accusations of “fascism” by European liberal salons, where “family politics” is equivalent to that dictated by the most extreme non-governmental organizations and gender ideologues. But I wonder, what policies would be most familiar and great for the devout founding fathers of Europe (men like Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer, and Robert Schuman): those of Budapest or those of Brussels?
So will Fidesz’s exit from the EPP isolate the Hungarians, as the Liberals dream? Not likely.
The future is uncertain, but Fidesz is now free to form a regional dream team with the Polish ruling party, Law and Justice, and perhaps the Italian populist movement. The resulting bloc could easily end up as a bastion of ideological common sense at the eastern and southern ends of the union.
One thing is certain, however: Orbán would not attract the often silent admiration of millions across Europe and the cruel enmity of the Brussels elite if he were not addressing real problems that mainstream parties ignore or exacerbate. He has realized the power of telling the real story of his small country and of Europe, a story in which people can be recognized. The same cannot be said of his enemies on EU councils.
Péter Heltai is the editor and host of podcasts at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest.
Twitter: @PeterHeltai