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Orban Backs Away From Europe’s Nationalists

Orban Backs Away From Europe’s Nationalists

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- If you want to know why attempts to build a united anti-immigration front in the next European Parliament are likely to fail, watch Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has been one of the loudest voices on the issue.

On March 20, the center-right European People’s Party, the biggest group in the European Union’s legislature, suspended the membership of Orban’s party, Fidesz, which has become toxic for the rest of the EPP. But the ouster didn’t primarily have to do with Orban’s authoritarian tendencies or his tough anti-immigration stance, which is shared by many European center-right politicians. Manfred Weber, the Bavarian politician leading the EPP into the May parliament election, highlighted two transgressions that set off the suspension process: The Hungarian government’s billboard campaign against Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission’s EPP-affiliated president, and its crackdown on the Central European University, founded in Budapest by Orban’s nemesis, the billionaire George Soros.

A new higher education law pushed through by the Orban government made it impossible for CEU to offer U.S. degree programs in Budapest. In response, the university announced it was moving that popular part of its operation to Vienna. Weber proposed a compromise – CEU could keep its operations in Hungary and create a joint program with the Technical University of Munich that would be able to award German and U.S. degrees.

Weber took the proposal, and a demand that Orban stop attacking Juncker and apologize to fellow EPP members, to Budapest before EPP voted, but the two failed to agree. Orban has acted defiant since the March 20 suspension. He has lashed out at Juncker again, calling him an “authentic socialist” responsible for Brexit and Europe’s “migrant invasion.” He also attacked Weber as a “Bavarian from Brussels” and said Fidesz would decide its own future without interference from the EPP.

At the same time, however, it appears that Orban has approved Weber’s CEU compromise. “The government considers Bavaria’s participation to be such a confidence-building step that it’s ready to review the possibility of issuing diplomas that are recognized in the United States, Germany and Hungary alike,” State Secretary Balazs Orban, no relation to the prime minister, wrote in a letter to parliament on Monday. 

Authoritarian rulers like Orban can’t afford to reverse course with their rhetoric. Their voters expect strength, understood as not bending under pressure, and a ongoing demonstration of sovereignty. Intractability in public statements is a feature Orban shares with the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party. So it would have been unreasonable to expect Orban to stop assailing Juncker and start begging forgiveness to get Fidesz’s EPP membership unfrozen.

But he doesn’t have to say anything at all to take the much more practical, and arguably more useful, step of letting CEU function in Budapest more or less as it had before (but with support from Munich). 

Instead, Orban could have broken entirely with the EPP and attended a meeting in Milan, hosted on Monday by Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s nationalist, anti-immigrant League party. Salvini is trying to set up a strong Euroskeptic faction in the European Parliament, bringing together nationalist forces now scattered among four different factions. 

But Orban declined to go, as did any representative of Kaczynski’s party, or even France’s Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally party is in the same European Parliament group as Salvini’s League. Even the leaders who did attend, such as Alternative for Germany’s Joerg Meuthen, said an alliance would be forged after, not before the election. Indeed, for nationalist voters in Germany, Finland or France, voting for a political force led by an Italian would be a no-no. And for the eastern Europeans, openly supporting Salvini’s bloc-building efforts would be a tactical misstep.

Relatively new members of the European Union, especially big EU funding recipients such as Poland and Hungary, can barely afford to take an anti-establishment stance. Even if a theoretical “nationalist international” faction had a chance at a majority in the European Parliament, which it doesn’t, alienating the EU’s technocratic elite, aligned with traditional center-right and center-left parties, wouldn’t be a great idea. The nationalists of eastern Europe have to be mindful of their countries’ national interests. In Orban’s case, national interests make membership in the EPP more attractive than joining the Salvini project.

Without the eastern European ruling parties, any nationalist alliance will be a grouping of minority parties, despite the League’s strength in Italy. It’ll also be easy for nationalist leaders not to join it after the election. 

It’s important to see how Orban’s CEU peace offering will be received. Politically, the EPP would do well to accept it. In fact, it hasn’t demanded that Orban give up his illiberal policies so it could take him back. A principled stand and a demand for more concessions from Orban would make more sense from an ideological purity point of view – but it would risk aiding the Salvini project if Orban runs out of other options.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Max Berley at mberley@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.

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