Two years ago, the largest center-right bloc of the European Parliament, the European People’s Party, suspended membership of Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz. The tug of war ended last week when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced that his party would be leaving the EPP for good. Washington’s foreign policy institution naturally applauded the outcome: its members equate any manifestation of populism or national conservatism with “extremism.”
And in reality, 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 hard-line globalist ideology that tolerates no dissent – and no dissent. has room 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, it was an excellent opportunity to rejoin the European political family after more than four decades of communist occupation. We looked for allies who shared the core values that we believe support the prosperity and decency of Western civilization.
Then we were rudely shaken up. It turned out that the so-called regular parties of center-right and center-left paid little more than lip service – if that – on sovereignty and self-determination, the diversity of nations, the traditional family and the Judeo-Christian foundations of Europe. As long as we followed the globalist and liberal line of Brussels and Washington, we were accepted. But as soon as we took a different path democratically, we were called “undemocratic”.
Orbán – the most democratically popular leader in Europe – has been called worse. Yet all of his decisions that angered the “mainstream” of the euro, including the leadership of the EPP, were pragmatic solutions to real problems – solutions more faithful to the legacy of the EU’s founding fathers than anything else the Eurocrats was offered. .
Consider illegal migration, an ongoing focal point since at least 2015. Orbán, almost the only one among center-right leaders, called for action to do what our treaties commit us to: protect our territorial sovereignty. Europe has asylum laws, which the liberal nations of Northern and Western Europe have bypassed to bring in over a million unscreened newcomers from the Middle East and Africa. Chaos, terror and massive social incohesion followed.
Most average Europeans now assume it was folly to open the gates of the continent, and Western politicians with a bit of courage and common sense are willing to admit this publicly. Yet the Eurocrats and their mainstream media mouthpieces called the Hungarian fascists and xenophobes simply because they insisted on the boundaries and principles of sovereignty enshrined in EU law.
Or take a family policy. The Hungarian government offers generous grants to promote marriage, family formation and childbearing – to prevent demographic collapse and ensure that there are future workers and taxpayers to support the aging population. In 10 years, the number of marriages has doubled and the demographic decline is starting to reverse. (Compare that to France, where the birth rate has hit its lowest point since 1945.)
Thanks to a recent amendment, the constitution also defines marriage, as most civilizations in most of human history have mandated the nurturing of children as the union of man and woman. Governments in Germany and France may disagree. But is it not the right of the Hungarian people to make that decision, as an overwhelming majority of their duly elected representatives did when voting to amend the constitution?
These views, too, have opened Hungary to accusations of “fascism” from Europe’s liberal salons, where “family policies” amount to what the most extreme non-governmental organizations and gender ideologues dictate. But I wonder, what policy would be more familiar and genius to the devout Catholic founders of Europe (men like Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman): the tangerines of Budapest or Brussels?
Will Fidesz’s departure from the EPP isolate the Hungarians, as the Liberals dream? Unlikely.
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 Italy’s populist movement. The resulting block could easily end up as a bulwark of ideological sanity at the eastern and southern ends of the union.
One thing is certain, however: Orbán would not arouse the often silent admiration of millions across Europe and the burning enmity of the Brussels elite, if he did not address real issues ignored or aggravated by the ‘mainstream’ parties. . He has seen the power of telling the true story of his small country and of Europe, a story in which people can identify with themselves. The same cannot be said of his enemies in the councils of the EU.
Péter Heltai is an editor and podcast presenter at Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest.
Twitter: @PeterHeltai