Kickl, Orbán and Babiš announce “patriotic manifesto”

FPÖ Federal Party Chairman Herbert Kickl will receive the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in Vienna on Sunday. The three of them will make a statement in a hotel together with the head of the FPÖ delegation in the EU Parliament, Harald Vilimsky. In a guest article for the Hungarian newspaper “Magyar Nemzet”, Orbán spoke out in favor of the European right-wing parties “forming strong factions in the European Parliament”.

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“On Sunday, two decisive events will take place – pay attention to Paris and Vienna,” Orban wrote. The Italian news agency ANSA had originally interpreted this as if an ORF appearance Kickl’s “Yesterday, the USA also took a big step towards change,” Orban added, referring to President Joe Biden’s botched TV appearance in the duel with his challenger Donald Trump. “If everything goes according to plan, and God willing, by the end of the year patriots will be in the majority throughout the Western world. Forward, team!”

Orbán’s right-wing nationalist party Fidesz, which has governed with a two-thirds majority since 2010, does not currently belong to any group in the EU Parliament. It left the European People’s Party (EPP) in 2021 after years of conflict. Babiš’s opposition liberal protest movement ANO, for its part, only recently left the EU Liberals. “We have left both the ‘Renew Europe’ group and the (party) ALDE because we have no interest in positions,” Babiš said on Monday on X (formerly Twitter). Both Fidesz and ANO had won the European elections in their countries.

The FPÖ and the French Rassemblement National (RN), which has good prospects of winning the parliamentary elections on Sunday, are among the leading forces in the “Identity and Democracy” (ID) group in the EU Parliament. The more moderate, eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group also emerged from the European elections significantly strengthened, partly due to the election success of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and is now the third strongest force in the European Parliament.

Most recently, Meloni had given Orbán the cold shoulder. Fidesz’s pro-Russian policy is not appreciated in the ECR, which also includes the right-wing nationalist Polish opposition party PiS (Law and Justice). The newly elected EU Parliament will meet for its inaugural session on July 16.

Orbán’s government will take over the presidency of the Council of the European Union for six months on Monday. The country, which has been hit with legal proceedings for violations of the rule of law, is putting its presidency under the motto “Make Europe Great Again”, borrowing from Trump’s successful campaign slogan from 2016 (“Make America Great Again”).