Growing
unease among international leaders over constitutional changes made by Viktor
Orban’s rightwing government
‘Hello, dictator’: EU president jokes with
Hungarian prime minister
European
Union officials are not necessarily known for their sharp one-liners, but
European commission head Jean-Claude Juncker had a scathing welcome for
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban at a summit in Riga on Friday, greeting
him with “Hello, dictator”.
The barb,
made in front of the press at the Latvian summit, came amid growing unease over
the policies of Orban’s rightwing government, which has carried out
constitutional changes and brought more authoritarian rule, critics say.
Orban’s
response was not audible.
Delegations
at the summit took several hours to hammer out a 10-page statement full of
bland postulations of the EU’s Eastern Partnership programme, but ahead of the
meeting Juncker was clearly in a more light-hearted mood. He also ribbed Greek
prime minister Alexis Tsipras for not wearing a tie.
Orban was labelled a “neofascist dictator” by US senator John McCain late last year, and
has alarmed EU leaders by suggesting his country could reintroduce the death penalty and place harsh restrictions on immigration.
Further
controversy has been caused by a questionnaire sent to all Hungarians by
Orban’s government to sound out their views on immigration. The UN human rights
office said on Friday the survey was “extremely biased” and “absolutely”
shocking, as it linked migration and terrorism.
On Tuesday,
former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt gave an agitated speech at the
European parliament in Strasbourg, spending several minutes lambasting Orban in
a furious voice, waving the immigration questionnaire in the air.
“If you
attack immigration, think a little bit of the many Hungarian refugees who left
their country because of the communists in 1956 and how they were received with
open arms by the other people of Europe,” Verhofstadt said, to applause, while
Orban looked on impassively.
“Hungarians
talk straight about tough things. We don’t like to beat about the bush. We
are a frank people,” the Hungarian leader responded.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.