Attempts by Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán to address MEPs at the inaugural plenary sitting of the newly elected assembly in Strasbourg have been rebuffed by parliamentary chiefs unable to find room to accommodate him in the agenda, two sources familiar with the issue have told Euronews.
By long-standing convention, heads of government are given the opportunity to address the Parliament when they take over the rotating presidency of the EU Council, presenting the agenda for their six-month turn at the helm of inter-governmental policy negotiations and answering questions from MEPs.
The sources said Orbán had indicated to the parliament that he could appear before the plenary on Tuesday or Wednesday (16-17 July) next week to present the agenda of the Hungarian presidency, which Budapest has given the slogan ‘Make Europe Great Again’.
Because Hungary had been strongly social democratic basically since WW2 (though much of that was behind the iron curtain), and they’d been hugely improving up to their entrance to the union, with only a little mistake of electing Orban once, before going back to a sane Premier.
And then 2010 arrived, and the entire country took a swing Hard Right and down shit street, but by that time they were already in.
I’ll just add that Fidesz (the right wing governing party) started out centrist in 1990. In 2010 they’d moved towards the right, but in a lot people’s minds they were one of the big, reasonable parties since the end of Soviet control. And also just in general “the opposition”.
The social democratic governing party also was inept and admitted as such (see Őszöd sleech).
So what happened was the left side of the spectrum lost all support, and what in many people’s minds was the centrist or centre-right opposition picked it all up. Just over half the votes gave them a supermajority and from that point they gradually attained complete control over all institutions as a result.