The Hungarian government is openly asking “What’s wrong with the Swedes?” as the Scandinavian country’s pro-immigration government lashes out at Budapest, while the leader of Poland’s governing Law and Justice Party has said his country must avoid Western Europe’s “social diseases”.
In a public blog post on the official About Hungary website, Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács posed the question: “Why are these senior Swedish figures portraying Hungary as Europe’s bogeyman, spreading falsehoods and distorting facts about our government’s policies on migration? Could it have something to do with the fact that the country faces general elections on September 9th?”
Sweden’s ambassador to Hungary was recently summoned by the Central European country’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, after his Swedish counterpart Margot Wallstrom claimed Hungary was forming an alliance with Italy’s Matteo Salvini against “democrats and the left” and told them to “bring it on”.
“Those who support immigration, including in this case members of the Swedish government, will not shy away from falsehoods and politically-motivated criticisms of democratically elected governments that, in representing the will of the citizens, oppose mass immigration and open borders,” railed Kovács, asserting that his government’s policy is to oppose illegal mass migration, not democracy.
He also repeated Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s claim that France’s Emmanuel Macron has become the EU’s globalist-in-chief, but quoted Foreign Minister Szijjártó’s suggestion that “the northern countries are also attempting to gain as much credit as possible in this battle by… launching a competition about who can criticise the countries of Central Europe to the greatest extent.”
To this Kovács added: “Thus far, Sweden seems to be winning this miserable game.”
Meanwhile, the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), Jarosław Kaczyński, warned supporters that while he hopes for his country to “achieve parity when it comes to living standards” with Western Europe, “that doesn’t mean we should repeat the mistakes of the West and become infected with social diseases that dominate there”.
Observers may take this to be a reference to the problems with crime, terrorism, and social cohesion which have been associated with mass migration and state-sponsored multiculturalism in countries such as Britain, France, and Germany — with Kaczyński having previously vowed that the EU could not “impose a social catastrophe” on Poland through compulsory migrant quotas.
Kaczyński also took aim at Poland’s left-liberal opposition, which adopted a much more pliant stance towards Brussels before PiS ejected them from government in 2015.
“I had said we would face an uphill battle and that stones would be thrown,” he said.
“We are being attacked internally and from the outside… It’s easy to serve the interests of the most powerful. If you want to serve the society, the nation, it’s much more difficult.”
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