European Parliament condemns Hungary

In a European parliamentary debate in Strasbourg on Tuesday, he said he rejected that the pro-migration forces threaten, blackmail and slander Hungary and the Hungarian people.

The EU report, authored by Green MEP Judith Sargentini, claimed that “there is a clear risk of a serious breach by Hungary of the values of the EU”, and called for launching the Article 7 procedure which suspends a member state’s rights.

Orban said all nations and EU member states had the right to determine their way of life in their own country.

“We protect our borders and we alone will decide whom we want to live together with. We’ve built a border fence and stopped hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants. We protected Hungary and we protected Europe,”Orban said.

Orban added that this was the first time in the EU’s history for a community to condemn its own border guards. He reminded his audience that he had been elected democratically.

“You want to pass moral judgement on and stigmatise a country and its people based on a quantitative majority,” Orban told the EP. In 2009, the Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance captured 56 percent of the vote and in 2014 it won with 52 percent of the vote, as the EP’s most successful party.

“You shoulder a serious responsibility when wanting to exclude a nation from the European decision-making process. You would strip Hungary of its right to represent its interests in the European family to which it belongs,” he said.

In his annual State of the Union message, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that the EU needs to take in more migrants.

Manuela Carmena, the mayor of Madrid, agreed. She said that immigrants are “heroes” and make better workers than Spaniards, and she wanted to fill depopulated areas of the country with them.

Poland meanwhile said that it will veto any attempt by the EU to deprive Hungary of voting rights.

Italian MEP, Mario Borghezio, a member of Matteo Salvini’s Lega party, has expressed support for Hungary. He criticised the EC following the vote of MEPs, who were 448 to 197 in favour of invoking the Article 7 procedure against Hungary, in response to what it describes as “flouting EU rules”.

Another 48 MEPs abstained from the vote.

Nigel Farage, the Ukip MEP who leads the EFDD political group in the European Parliament, noted in response: “The authoritarian grip of the EU gets even tighter.”

ALDE, the political group led by Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt, said it was “glad” the European Parliament voted against Hungary.