The Hungarian Parliament’s speaker has spoken out against the “new totalitarian ambition” of liberalism in the European Union, saying he would not vote to join the bloc today.
László Kövér, the Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary, said that he “did not vote yes with a good heart” during the Hungarian referendum on joining the EU in 2003, but judged that, all things considered, membership would strengthen the country’s finances and provide it with an international platform to assert its national interests.
He told Kossuth Rádió that “if there were a referendum now, I would most certainly vote no” to joining — but was clear that, with Hungary already being an EU member-state, he does not favour pulling out, as the United Kingdom has done.
Earlier this month, he had said that “Hungary will remain a member of the EU until [it] collapses”– predicting that this would happen within a generation, as Brussels is “on a trajectory that is economically, socially, spiritually and morally unsustainable”.
Kövér elaborated on this theme in his recent comments to Kossuth Rádió, telling the broadcaster that “after Nazis and Communists, a new totalitarian ambition is about to destroy Europe, sometimes called Liberalism, post-Humanism or whatever… green folly.”
Hungary, along with countries with similarly national conservative-minded governments in the EU, such as Poland, has clashed with the Brussels establishment over the migrant crisis and the EU’s attempts to enforce compulsory migrant redistribution in recent years, as well as Hungary’s efforts to make non-governmental organisations (NGOs) be more transparent about their sources of foreign funding, among other things.
Hostilities have been greatly stepped up in recent days by the Hungarian parliament’s passage of a package of anti-paedophile laws, which include restrictions on LGBT content in schools and media content aimed at children — with Prime Minister Viktor insisting that “education in schools must not be in conflict with the will of parents” and that “parents also rightly expect that on platforms used by our children, pornography, sexuality for its own sake, homosexuality and gender reassignment programs should not be available.”
This has led the Netherlands’ liberal prime minister, Mark Rutte, to call on the EU to “force Hungary to its knees regarding this issue”, and to the European Parliament alleging that the legislation is a “threat to democracy and fundamental rights.”
Hungary has maintained a combative posture so far, with the government pointing out that a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) who has been leading the charge against them on the new laws has a conviction for distributing gay revenge porn.
Speaker Kövér, for his part, slammed “uppity [European] politicians rubbing in our faces that we would not be accepted into the EU today because of our so-called rule-of-law issues and values and views,” and that the “rage [the laws have] brought up in western European politicians is irrational”.