Tag: Article Seven of the United States Constitution

Ignoring the nuance that the European Parliament is, in fact, directly elected, he tried to reduce the importance of the vote, claiming that only "politicians of the past" voted against him, and the "pro-migration elites" are attacking him because they want to flood Hungary with migrants. Is this political game enough for him to win the European Parliament elections domestically? While Orban is increasingly open about his ambitions to become a serious European politician, there are five reasons why it seems it will be way more difficult than he thinks. The political forces that are supportive towards him now represent less than a third of the European Parliament. Second, immigration and the refugee crisis are not the only concerns of Europeans - as he assumes. Even Italy's Matteo Salvini is more diplomatic when it comes to this issue. Viktor Orban talks about defending Europe's borders, about protection in the countries of origin and investment in Africa, and I agree with him. An important takeaway of the European parliament vote was that Orban has many more supporters in central and eastern Europe, even from ideologically distant players (eg Czech communist and Slovakian socialists), than from western Europe. While he has popular supporters in big west European countries such as Italy (Salvini), France (Marine Le Pen) and Netherlands (Geert Wilders), it seems that in central and eastern Europe his message resonates better, and solidarity works more. While Orban looks for the upcoming European parliament election in May 2019 as a revolution that is coming, he will be dissatisfied with the results.