Orban Backs Away From Europe’s Nationalists
The Hungarian leader’s compromises could undermine the anti-immigration front in the next European Parliament.
The Hungarian prime minister is showing some give.
Photographer: Peter Kohalmi/AFP/Getty Images
If you want to know why attempts to build a united anti-immigration front in the next European Parliament are likely to fail, watch Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has been one of the loudest voices on the issue.
On March 20, the center-right European People’s Party, the biggest group in the European Union’s legislature, suspended the membership of Orban’s party, Fidesz, which has become toxic for the rest of the EPP. But the ouster didn’t primarily have to do with Orban’s authoritarian tendencies or his tough anti-immigration stance, which is shared by many European center-right politicians. Manfred Weber, the Bavarian politician leading the EPP into the May parliament election, highlighted two transgressions that set off the suspension process: The Hungarian government’s billboard campaign against Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission’s EPP-affiliated president, and its crackdown on the Central European University, founded in Budapest by Orban’s nemesis, the billionaire George Soros.