‘European Commission’s Days Are Numbered,’ Says Orban as EU Piles Pressure on Hungary over Migrants

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is greeted by President of the European Commission J
JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP/Getty
Victoria Friedman

Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán has said that the Jeane-Claude Juncker-led European Commission’s days are “numbered”, with its mandate expiring in May and Eurosceptic parties set to make gains in 2019 elections.

Prime Minister Orbán made the comments during his Friday interview on Kossuth Radio in relation to the Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, recently launching infringement procedures against Hungary over its “Stop Soros” law and related constitutional amendments.

The Stop Soros legislation, passed after Mr Orbán won his third term as Prime Minister, makes it illegal to promote or support illegal mass migration.

The laws affects many of globalist Hungarian-American George Soros’s civil society organisations and partner pressure groups linked to his Open Society Foundations operating in the country, such as the refugee rights group the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union.

In response, the European Commission referred Hungary to the EU Court of Justice “for non-compliance of its asylum and return legislation with EU law” and for the Stop Soros legislation for its “[in]compatibility with EU law”, calling it a “violation” of migrants’ rights to “communicate with and be assisted by relevant national, international and non-governmental organisations” in pursuit of asylum applications.

Calling the Commission’s actions meaningless, Mr Orbán said the body, whose mandate ends in less than a year, was like “the last movements of frogs’ legs in biological experiments which we saw when we were at school, which no longer had significance”.

“We need a new Commission with a new approach.

“We need a Commission after the European elections which does not punish those countries that protect their borders like Hungary,” he told listeners.

European Parliament elections are to be held in May 2019, and a new Commission is appointed within six months of the elections whereby the governments of member states will agree on who to designate as the new Commission President. Then, the Commission President-designate, in discussion with the member state governments, chooses the other 29 Members of the Commission. The new Parliament then interviews all 30 members and gives its opinion on the entire “college”.

Recent analysis by Reuters has found that pro-sovereignty, Eurosceptic parties are set to make gains in the European Parliament elections in May 2019, boosted by the popularity of populist and conservative national governments in Italy, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Poland and well as the rise of right-wing parties in Germany, Sweden, France, and the Netherlands.

With governments turning to the right and the European Parliament potentially turning Eurosceptic, the mechanisms of the Commission may be, if not at least in part, wrestled from its globalist, progressive predecessors.

Mr Orbán also criticised the Commission for attempting to bribe European Union countries with a mere 6,000 euros (£5,300/$7,000) per migrant to take in asylum seekers picked up in the Mediterranean Sea for processing, calling it “a dangerous line of thought” and that the bloc should not be punishing countries that protect its borders, but rather punishing nations which encourage mass migration.

Whilst naming no country, he clearly implicated Germany which unilaterally opened the floodgates of Europe to over one million migrants during the height of the crisis in 2015. Central European countries like Hungary and Poland have refused the forced redistribution of migrants, resulting in threats of legal action from the bloc.

The Prime Minister also called Hungary one of the world’s most politically stable countries, noting that his conservative Fidesz party, with it clear policies supported by the people, was able to secure a third consecutive election victory with a parliamentary supermajority.

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