Percorso:ANSA > Nuova Europa > Analysis > Hungary:Hegedus,Orban and me started liberal then he changed
Hungary:Hegedus,Orban and me started liberal then he changed
EU at risk if populists and nationalist leaders prevail
17 August, 12:06
(by Stefano Giantin)
(ANSA) - BELGRADE, AUG 17 - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor
Orban is "hostile to all the globalist, cosmopolitan,
pro-European views of the mainstream," in what is "not only a
conflict of words, but this a very different view about the
future," Istvan Hegedus, Hungarian intellectual and chairman of
the Hungarian Europe Society told to ANSA..
Hegedus joined Fidesz when the current Orban's party was at the helm of the battle against the communist regime in Budapest, fighting for democratization and European values. Former member of the Parliament after the first free elections, he left Fidesz in the 1990s.
"I met Orban in 1988, all of us, including him, we were young liberals. Already in the early 1990s, there was a change in his mindset, and he started to move away from liberal, cosmopolitan European ideology and he became much more skeptical and even hostile towards the so-called liberal media, intellectuals, suspicious of the role of the liberal elite first in Hungary and then later on in Europe and globally," Hegedus recalls. "What we see today of Orban's political character and behavior, populism, anti-EU rethoric, anti-migration policies, rooted in this political change almost 30 years ago, when he lost his believes towards liberal values." Orban that is a threat to the EU, Hegedus suggests. "In a way he thinks that the mainstream liberal dominant elite, globally, including the US, most of the EU member states and the European institutions are not representing the real people. The real people should represented by national parties, such his, but also Salvini's Lega and other similar parties." In relations to the EU, "his rethoric officialy seems to be only against Brussels, against the so-called bureacras, but I think in reality if he and Salvini and Marie Le Pen would grasp power in the same time that might be the end of the EU as we know it," Hegedus claims.
Europe that was a dream, for Hungary, Poland and for all other Central Europe countries before joining the EU, while the current political leaderships are often at war with Brussels, the popularity of the Union is falling in Eastern Europe. "I think this was a gradual change, not from a day to another, but a gradual shift towards more pessimism about the future of Europe and the global institutions, and some more nationalistic sovereign ideas came to surface. But I would argue that still probably the majority of the people support EU membership in Hungary and Poland , they atill believe in European values.
Their governments are more populistic and right wing even than their supporters, for many aspects, including LGBT rights." (ANSA).
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Hegedus joined Fidesz when the current Orban's party was at the helm of the battle against the communist regime in Budapest, fighting for democratization and European values. Former member of the Parliament after the first free elections, he left Fidesz in the 1990s.
"I met Orban in 1988, all of us, including him, we were young liberals. Already in the early 1990s, there was a change in his mindset, and he started to move away from liberal, cosmopolitan European ideology and he became much more skeptical and even hostile towards the so-called liberal media, intellectuals, suspicious of the role of the liberal elite first in Hungary and then later on in Europe and globally," Hegedus recalls. "What we see today of Orban's political character and behavior, populism, anti-EU rethoric, anti-migration policies, rooted in this political change almost 30 years ago, when he lost his believes towards liberal values." Orban that is a threat to the EU, Hegedus suggests. "In a way he thinks that the mainstream liberal dominant elite, globally, including the US, most of the EU member states and the European institutions are not representing the real people. The real people should represented by national parties, such his, but also Salvini's Lega and other similar parties." In relations to the EU, "his rethoric officialy seems to be only against Brussels, against the so-called bureacras, but I think in reality if he and Salvini and Marie Le Pen would grasp power in the same time that might be the end of the EU as we know it," Hegedus claims.
Europe that was a dream, for Hungary, Poland and for all other Central Europe countries before joining the EU, while the current political leaderships are often at war with Brussels, the popularity of the Union is falling in Eastern Europe. "I think this was a gradual change, not from a day to another, but a gradual shift towards more pessimism about the future of Europe and the global institutions, and some more nationalistic sovereign ideas came to surface. But I would argue that still probably the majority of the people support EU membership in Hungary and Poland , they atill believe in European values.
Their governments are more populistic and right wing even than their supporters, for many aspects, including LGBT rights." (ANSA).
