In the last few days, the government’s many media outlets have been full of articles about Frans Timmermans’ visit to Budapest. The occasion for the visit was the nominating convention of MSZP, which put the final stamp of approval on the party’s EP list. Frans Timmermans, former Dutch minister of foreign affairs and currently first vice-president of the European Commission, is the Spitzenkandidat of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) for the position of president of the European Commission. He is running against Manfred Weber, the candidate of the conservative European People’s Party.
All the articles, and there are many of them, that have appeared in the right-wing press portray Timmermans as a puppet of George Soros and therefore also the greatest advocate of flooding Europe with immigrants from the Middle East and Africa. He is considered to be an enemy of Hungary because, next to Guy Verhofstadt, parliamentary leader of ALDE, he is the harshest critic of Viktor Orbán.
In a lengthy article in Magyar Nemzet titled “Timmermans will arrive in Hungary,” a complicated story emerges, according to which Timmermans’ anticipated meeting with trade union leaders, which was to precede his speech at the nominating convention, is nothing more than a diversionary tactic to conceal his real goal of promoting migration into the European Union, including Hungary. Even so, the article reveals that the government is unhappy with the spectacular growth of the trade union movement since the successful Audi strike, which may give a boost to the Hungarian left.
The same author followed up Timmermans’ meeting with the trade union leaders in another article in which he anticipated what might transpire during a “working dinner” organized at the request of Frans Timmermans. As he put it, Timmermans and the trade union leaders “at the dinner table will figure out what competencies could be taken away from the member states.” For example, “Brussels would decide on wages and pensions,” which would lead to a united Europe and to the declining power of the member states. From the point of view of Hungarian workers, however, who are very badly underpaid in comparison to their western colleagues, this idea should be appealing. Perhaps for that very reason, the author of the article assured his readers that relatively few union leaders accepted Timmermans’ invitation.
Soon enough, the government propaganda outlets dropped the topic of trade unions and returned to the familiar “migration” issue. Századvég, Fidesz’s think tank, considers Timmermans’ trip to Hungary utterly superfluous because 69% of MSZP voters support Viktor Orbán’s anti-immigration policies. Moreover, 77% of MSZP supporters want to solve the low birthrate by means of Orbán’s family policy, outlined a week ago, and not by immigration.
The next Fidesz move was to label MSZP as a party supporting the migration policies of the European Union. Timmermans is “the leader of the pro-immigration list, the closest and most trusted man of Soros.” One of the deputy whips of Fidesz described the situation as follows: “The Budapest station of the Soros campaign makes it clear that the socialists are ready to give all their support to Timmermans.”
Frans Timmermans at the MSZP EP nominating convention
Fidesz still had one big gun left against MSZP, and that was the accusation of anti-Semitism on account of the rumored future Jobbik-MSZP alliance. It has been evident for some time that Fidesz’s aim is the destruction of Jobbik. Their attack on the party is two-pronged. First, Fidesz through the State Audit Office is trying its best to annihilate the party financially. Second, it is keeping alive Jobbik’s anti-Semitic past and its former extremist views. Of course, Fidesz never had any problem with Jobbik’s anti-Semitism or its extremist political views as long as Jobbik supported Fidesz’s policies. But once the Jobbik leadership decided to move closer to the political center and consequently began to feel the destructive force of Fidesz, they realized that the one-party regime Viktor Orbán introduced is just as injurious to their existence as to the traditional left-of-center opposition parties. And the closer their views became to those on the left, the more the attacks on them intensified. As things stand now, the State Audit Office is demanding almost a billion forints (approximately $3.5 million) from them in fines for illegal party financing. The party has 20 million forints in its bank account.
By today, the Fidesz spokesman Balázs Hidvéghi “demanded an answer from Timmermans whether it is possible for the socialists to cooperate with Nazi parties.” Because Timmermans just “participated in the congress of a party whose chairman, Bertalan Tóth, suggested collaboration with the anti-Semitic Jobbik.” He reminded Timmermans that Philippe Lamberts, EP leader of the Greens-European Free Alliance, said that if LMP joins Jobbik in a common list, LMP will be expelled from the delegation. I should add before there is any misunderstanding that, although it is true that at one of the demonstrations in December Tóth suggested a common EP list of all opposition parties, the idea has since been discarded. Even though negotiations between LMP and Jobbik continued for awhile, Jobbik announced that it will have its own EP list, that is, if it doesn’t get annihilated by Fidesz before May.
Timmermans’ speech covered several important issues: higher wages, the rule of law, nationalism, academic freedom, freedom of the media, an independent judiciary, and the fear Orbán has kindled in the last two years. Figyelő was the only government organ that spent any time on the speech, but I expect a barrage of negative articles to appear soon. It was Timmermans’ criticism of nationalism that must have bothered the government parties most because that was one of the two passages from the speech that the magazine covered fully. Apparently, Timmermans claimed that “nationalism means scare-mongering; nationalists are people who are afraid and resentful. They see enemies everywhere, even in their neighbors.” The second passage to which the article called attention was Timmermans’ remarks on anti-Semitism, which “is especially interesting in light of the blossoming romance of Jobbik and the left, particularly since Timmermans’ most important promise is that in the event of his election he will never collaborate with the extreme right.”
Fidesz’s fear of collaboration among the opposition parties, not in the EP elections as these government propaganda organs claim but at the municipal elections in October, is warranted. Such collaboration might pose a challenge to Fidesz, especially in Budapest and the larger cities. Fidesz is desperately trying to avert such a development, which they know might mean their eventual downfall.