Government confronts Brussels
September 29th, 2018After several cabinet ministers, including the Prime Minister, have described Hungary’s disagreements with the EU mainstream as a conflict over uncontrolled mass migration, a left-wing commentator predicts that Hungary will remain without friends in the world.
In his customary bi-weekly radio interview, PM Orbán condemned EU Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos for his comments to the United Nations in New York that the European Union is working on a framework to manage immigration, including compulsory relocation quotas. Mr Orbán said the Commission is supposed to be neutral on political matters and should not represent opinions that are controversial among member states.
In Népszava, Péter Somfai suggests that as a result of the confrontational attitude followed by the government within the European Union, Hungary will eventually isolate herself fully from all the other nations of the Europe. He describes Mr. Orbán’s foreign policy as progressively drifting away from the European mainstream while befriending Russia and central Asian dictatorships. He suspects that the Prime Minister places what he sees as the national interest ahead of friendship. The problem is, he argues, that by doing so, Mr. Orbán will actually end up harming the national interest, as Hungary will eventually find herself ‘the loudest cockerel on a central European dunghill’. And the problem with that, he predicts, is that there will be nothing to peck on that dunghill.