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Orbán’s place in European center right still in doubt after talks

‘Problems are not yet solved,’ Manfred Weber says after meeting Hungarian PM.

A dispute that could lead to the expulsion of Hungary’s ruling party from Europe’s center-right bloc remained unresolved on Tuesday after talks between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the alliance’s parliamentary chief.

“Today in my talks with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán we had a constructive atmosphere, but problems are not yet solved,” Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament, told reporters in Budapest.

“We have to still assess, still discuss among the EPP party members, about the upcoming decisions,” said Weber, the EPP candidate to be European Commission president in May’s European Parliament election.

EPP officials will discuss on March 20 whether Fidesz should remain in the bloc, after over a dozen member parties called for its expulsion or suspension. The trigger for the calls was an anti-migration campaign targeting European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, a senior EPP member, and Hungarian-American financier and philanthropist George Soros.

Weber said it is positive that Orbán underlined the poster campaign would come to an end. But he said broader issues also have to be addressed.

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“What we want to guarantee is that Fidesz is committed to the EPP values, and Hungary is a clear pro-European country which sticks to the European values,” he said.

Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, insisted following the meeting that the debate within the EPP over Fidesz was really about migration. He accused the prime minister’s critics of wanting to expel Fidesz due to its anti-migration stance.

But he also struck a conciliatory note, saying that the poster campaign is over. He noted that Orbán made clear to Weber he had not intended to hurt anyone and is ready to apologize if he has done so. That appeared to meet one of Weber’s conditions for keeping Fidesz in the EPP.

Anti-Juncker ads could still be seen on the streets of Budapest and on Fidesz-affiliated websites on Tuesday.

Weber held his press conference at a historic synagogue in central Budapest, in a gesture to the Hungarian Jewish community. Jewish groups and others have repeatedly accused Orbán of using anti-Semitic tropes and his government of practicing revisionism when it comes to the history of the Holocaust in Hungary.

Weber sat next to the head of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, András Heisler, who was recently portrayed on the cover of a Fidesz-linked magazine with banknotes falling around him.

This article has been updated.