Regardless of what people think about him is the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, a figure that makes an impression in the european debate right now.
During the past month, he has made use of an internal struggle within the EU-partigruppen EPP to create headlines across the continent. When his right-wing populist party Fidesz finally were expelled from the EPP basunerade it out as a victory – which it also was, because more than a dozen member parties had demanded that Fidesz would be excluded altogether.
in many ways the polar opposites in the european policy-making, as ministers from both countries are happy to take up on. The result is a more excited tone of voice.
last week, it was the minister of social affairs Annika Strandhäll who tweeted about the new family policy to the ”we stayed there and traveled 30”. The Hungarian deputy prime minister Zsolt Semjén countered with calling her a ”sick creature”.
https://twitter.com/strandhall/status/1095381772307783680
Zoltán Kovács for many years, Orbán’s spokesman, nowadays, with the minister’s rank. While Orbán himself almost never speaks with the media other than sympathetic at home, traveling to the tireless Kovács around Europe and explains his policy on the excellent English.
for meetings with the media, mps and students. But not with the government.
” the Government was not interested. The question is: how are you going to have a discussion about the Swedish government does not want to meet the Hungarian government, ” says Kovács.
Strandhälls comment on the Hungarian family policy was ”an indication that we have a fascist government”, he believes.
” I would be more careful with such accusations if I was a Swedish politician. We accuse never any, we’re not trying to dictate american domestic policy. I say this: stop using us as a doormat.
I can agree with is that if Sweden and the Swedish media begin to use Hungary as a bad example, then has the Hungarian media the right to use Sweden as an example of failed policy.
in Hungary, in recent years, Sweden has been presented as an example of how it can go if you receive a large number of refugees from muslim countries. It is a picture of almost total lawlessness, of the dozens of zones where the police and the authorities do not dare, of mass rapes and islamisation.
Hungary has received a minuscule number of muslim immigrants, but was in 2015 genomgångsland for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria. Orbán called the refugees ”a gift” and did closed borders to its profilfråga – something that helped him and Fidesz to a third segerval in a row in 2018, when the party got 49 per cent of the votes.
Since Orbán came to power in 2010, the criticism has been fierce from other EU-countries, not only from Sweden. It has not really been the most about refugees, but about what others see as a dismantling of democratic institutions.
Zoltán Kovács during the visit in Stockholm on Tuesday. Photo: Adam Daver
has the State taken a stronger control over the judiciary and the media, while at the same time obstructed the process for ngos. Orbán calls it ”illiberal democracy”, while critics see it as all counterweights to the government’s power to deliberately eroded.
Kovács has a ready answer to this criticism. He is targeted particularly at organizations that are pointing out Hungary for the deficiencies in the safeguarding of human rights or for the bad freedom of the press.
” this so-called voluntary sector is trying to introduce a new type of democracy. With all their money, they are trying to replace our representative democracy against an activist-democracy.
on George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire and philanthropist Fidesz for several years has held up as its number one enemy.
– Politicians who have been elected by the people are called populists by people who have never been chosen by anyone. They call themselves the democratic standard bearer, but it is nonsense.
Actually, it’s all about immigration, says Kovács. He sees it as ”the new dividing line in european politics”.
– It affects all aspects of our lives. If you look closely at what it is like criticising our policies, our economic policies, so you will see that in principle it is those who are for immigration.
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