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Navracsics nominated Brussels Commissioner for Education

September 12th, 2014

The Left considers the post insignificant and an expression of dissatisfaction with the Hungarian government, while the Right thinks the portfolio is of strategic importance.

EC Chairman JeanClaude Juncker has released his proposed list of EU Commissioners, with Foreign Minister Tibor Navracsics offered the education, culture, youth and citizenship portfolio. Left-wing politicians immediately said the offer was humiliating and reflected the bad image of the government. Former Socialist Party Chairman and EU Commissioner (2005-2009) László Kovács told ATV he didn’t agree with that judgement, his own portfolio was declared insignificant by the right wing opposition in 2004, and “political zeal conflicts with rationality”, he commented.
 
In its front page editorial, Népszabadság writes that if Juncker had wanted to lead the Hungarian government a merry dance, he would have put Navracsics in charge of “fundamental rights”. Instead, he just parked him in a post where he ”wouldn’t be too much of a nuisance”. Navracsics’s Latvian, Estonian and Bulgarian colleages all got more influential portfolios, Népszabadság  contends.
 
In Népszava, Tamás Rónay remarks that most neighbouring countries have been offered much more important posts, and believes that Hungary has been „devalued” in the eyes of European decision makers, just like the Hungarian international football team has been (with its home defeat by Northern Ireland last Sunday). “We are getting painful slaps on the face, although in politics they are not as spectacular as they are in football. But they are still humiliating,” Rónai asserts.
 

On Heti Válasz’s website, István Dévényi says it was clear from the start that whatever portfolio Mr Navracsics would be offered, the opposition would  consider him ’the loser of the day’. What he finds surprising is a statement by the spokesman of the Democratic Coalition (DK), who said “the portfolio Navracsics has been offered has nothing to do with Europe”. Dévényi agrees with a comment by 444, placing Navracsics’s portfolio in order of importance halfway between Customs and Welfare – the portfolios of the previous Hungarian commissioners.

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