Vice-President of the European Parliament, on the defeat of Viktor Orban: “We will not have another agent of the Russian Federation in our midst”
Victor Negrescu, vice-president of the European Parliament, said on Monday evening that the result of the parliamentary elections in Hungary, in which Viktor Orban and Fidesz were defeated by Peter Magyar and Tisza, was “viewed with optimism” in Brussels.
Commenting on the election results in an intervention on Antena 3, Negrescu said that with the electoral defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban “we can talk about the possibility of making decisions much easier at the European level”.
“Viktor Orban blocked many decisions, some of which were also in Romania's interest. For example, Hungary blocked the decision regarding the start of cluster negotiations for the accession to the European Union for the Republic of Moldova. They also blocked a series of decisions in the energy area that would have helped Romania to have access to additional European funds and better interconnections with the common European energy market – and, automatically, lower energy prices,” said the social democrat.
With the departure of Viktor Orban from power, Negrescu added, for Europe there is “the possibility to be more united, to stop having dissensions”.
“We will no longer have an agent of the Russian Federation in our midst, because, unfortunately (…), very clear reports have appeared regarding the conversations of high-ranking officials, members of the Fidesz party, who were in direct dialogue with the representatives of the Russian Federation and communicated there what we were discussing at the European level, which automatically created mistrust and the possibility of taking clear decisions regarding Europe”, continued Victor Negrescu.
According to an investigation by VSquare and TheInsider before the election, Viktor Orban's government worked with Russia to remove Russian oligarchs, companies and banks from the EU sanctions list.
In March, The Washington Post wrote that Russian intelligence officers had proposed a way to “fundamentally change the entire paradigm of the election campaign” in Hungary by “staging an assassination attempt on Viktor Orban.”
“Important challenges” for Hungary's future government
Negrescu described the great winner of the Hungarian election, Peter Magyar, as “a determined man with a clearly conservative vision”.
“He promised to form a government with broad political representativeness. This means that all political currents should be found in the future government. They have a series of important challenges, in the area of European funds, in the area of legal reconstruction, in the area of rebuilding trust in state institutions. Including the president of Hungary may be changed”, the vice-president of the European Parliament also declared.
