Two years ago, the European Center’s largest center-right bloc, the European People’s Party, suspended membership of Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz. Last week, the tug of war ended when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced that his party would leave the EPP forever. The establishment of Washington’s foreign policy, of course, applauded the outcome: its members equated every 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 hard-line global ideology that makes no difference – and has no room for concern. of ordinary voters in Central and Eastern Europe: faith, family and national dignity.
For the peoples of the post-Soviet bloc, such as Hungary and Poland, joining the European political family after more than four decades of Communist occupation was an excellent opportunity. We have been looking for allies who share the core values that we believe support the prosperity and decency of Western civilization.
Then we had a rude awakening. It seems that the so-called mainstream parties of the center right and center left paid little more than lip service – If it – to sovereignty and self-determination, the diversity of countries, the traditional family and the Judeo-Christian foundation of Europe. As long as we toured the global and liberal line of Brussels and Washington, we were accepted. But once we democratically chose another path, we were called ‘undemocratic’.
Orbán – the single most democratically popular leader in Europe – has been called worse. Yet all its decisions that spurred the anger of the “mainstream” Eurozone, including the EPP leadership, were pragmatic solutions to real problems – solutions that were, moreover, more faithful to the legacy of the founding members of the EU than anything Eurocrats were offered.
Consider illegal migration, a constant hotspot since at least 2015. Orbán, almost exclusively among center-right leaders, has called for action to do what our treaties bind us to do: protect our territorial sovereignty. Europe has asylum laws, which have bypassed the liberal countries of Northern and Western Europe to bring in more than a million rude newcomers from the Middle East and Africa. Chaos, terror and mass social inhalation arose.
Most average Europeans now take it for granted that it was foolish to throw open the gates of the continent, and Western politicians with a little courage and common sense are willing to admit it in public. Yet the Eurocrats and their mainstream media mouthpieces labeled Hungarians’ fascists and xenophobes for simply insisting on the boundaries and sovereignty principles established by EU law.
Or take a family policy. The Hungarian government offers generous subsidies to promote marriage, family formation and childbearing – to prevent demographic collapse and to ensure that there are future workers and taxpayers who support the aging population. Over ten years, the number of marriages has doubled and the demographic decline has begun to reverse. (Compare this with France, with its birth rate 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, according to the union of husband and wife, to care for children. 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 they amended the constitution?
These positions, too, have opened Hungary to charges of ‘fascism’ from the liberal salons of Europe, where ‘family policy’ amounts to everything that the most extreme non-governmental organizations and gender ideologues prescribe. But I wonder, what policies would be more familiar and genius to the religious Catholic founders of Europe (men like Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman): the mandarins of Budapest or Brussels?
Will Fidesz’s departure from the EPP therefore isolate the Hungarians, like the liberal dream? Not likely.
The future is uncertain, but Fidesz can now form a regional dream team with the Polish ruling party, Law and Justice, and perhaps also the populist movement of Italy. The resulting bloc could easily end up as a bastion of ideological mind at the eastern and southern ends of the union.
One thing is certain, however: Orbán will not attract the often silent admiration of millions across Europe and the burning enmity of the Brussels elite, if he does not address real problems that the “mainstream” parties ignore or exacerbate. . He realized the power of telling the true story of his small country and Europe, a story in which people can recognize themselves. The same cannot be said of his enemies in the EU Councils.
Péter Heltai is an editor and podcast host at the Budapest Mathias Corvinus Collegium.
Twitter: @PeterHeltai