Fidesz quits Fine Gael's EPP group in European Parliament showdown

Right-wing Hungarian leader Viktor Orban has pulled his Fidesz party out of the European People's Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament, the culmination of years of mounting unhappiness among MEPs over the authoritarian turn of the Budapest leadership.

All five Fine Gael MEPs were among the 81 per cent of the pan-European EPP group that voted in favour of new rules that would have allowed it to suspend or expel party colleagues, a change seen as making the suspension of Fidesz MEPs only a matter of time.

As soon as the change was approved, Mr Orban announced the party’s MEPs were quitting the group, effectively opting to leave rather than be expelled.

“The amendments to the rules of the EPP group are clearly a hostile move against Fidesz and our voters,” Orban wrote in a letter to the EPP leadership. “The governing body of Fidesz has decided to leave the EPP group immediately.”

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Some Fine Gael MEPs expressed relief at their Hungarian colleagues' departure. "Finally," tweeted Midlands–North-West MEP Maria Walsh, while Frances Fitzgerald described it as "a welcome development".

Mr Orban’s strongman leadership, which has combined the erosion of the rule of law with the curtailment of civil society, minority and media freedoms has long rankled with the EPP’s more liberal members. However, the Hungarian leader retains allies among its more conservative and radical wing, and the issue of how to deal with Fidesz has been a perennial problem that has split the group for years.

The departure of Fidesz from the EPP group in the European Parliament is not the final conclusion to the affair as the party remains within the overall EPP structure for now, albeit as a suspended member with no voting rights.

Autocratic rule

The EPP's political assembly suspended Fidesz in 2019 due to Mr Orban's increasingly autocratic rule in Hungary, which has seen NGO Freedom House assess the country to be no longer a democracy.

Yet moves to expel Fidesz outright have been delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic and bridge-building attempts to try to rein in the party while keeping it as an ally, an approach championed by members of German chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, an influential force in the EPP.

However, the exit of the MEPs from the EPP’s group in the European Parliament means a vote on expulsion will be held as soon as Covid-19 conditions allow.

Under its statutes parliamentarians of member parties must adhere to EPP groups in all assemblies, the party said in a statement, meaning that “Fidesz is now facing an exclusion procedure from the party”.

This requires an in-person political assembly “which will meet when it is safe to do so given the current pandemic situation”, the statement read.