Budapest (dpa) – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has threatened to withdraw the ruling party Fidesz from the conservative European People’s Party bloc in the European Parliament, he said in a letter published on Sunday.
Orban wrote to Manfred Weber, the German politician who heads the conservative EPP bloc, saying Fidesz would leave if the group decided to change its regulations as its leaders proposed on Friday.
Fidesz vice chair Katalin Novak published the letter on Twitter.
Orban is also head of the right-wing nationalist Fidesz. The proposed changes would allow the group to be suspended or excluded from the EPP bloc, with only a 50 per cent majority vote in some cases.
The EPP parliamentary group, which also includes German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc, has been wrangling with Fidesz for some years.
Fidesz’s membership of the EPP has been suspended since 2018 because of Orban’s eurosceptic policies.
This does not apply to the EPP group in the European Parliament, to which the Fidesz MEPs still belong.
That could change after Wednesday’s vote, when the group decides whether to revise its internal regulations.
The suspension could follow in the weeks ahead, if Fidesz does not withdraw first.
Amending the rules of procedure would lead to the “legally questionable suspension of our elected deputies in the EPP group,” Orban wrote to Weber.
“If Fidesz is not welcome, then we do not feel obliged to remain in the group.”
