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Budapest (AFP) – Emmanuel Macron meets on Monday in Budapest with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, his opponent within the EU on the values facet however a possible ally on topics corresponding to investments, nuclear or European protection, on this system of the French presidency.
This journey, the primary by a French head of state since 2007, takes place throughout the framework of a summit of the nations of the Visegrad group (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia).
“He’s a political opponent, however a European companion”, underlined Thursday Mr. Macron, who thus ends his tour of the 26 different capitals of the European Union. “No matter our political sensitivities, our selections, we should work collectively for our Europe”.
“It is rather clear that as regards to the rule of legislation, there can be disagreements, however I feel that on the themes of sovereignty, as regards to the expansion mannequin and on a number of topics, there may also be a capability to seek out helpful compromises, ”he added.
Viktor Orban has nonetheless usually been cited by Emmanuel Macron because the chief of a nationalist and sovereignist camp within the EU, to which he opposes that of the “progressive” Europhiles.
– Frequent floor –
With Poland, Hungary has adopted a number of legal guidelines contested in Brussels, particularly a textual content prohibiting the illustration of homosexuality amongst these beneath 18. And like Warsaw, it challenges the supremacy of European legislation over nationwide legislation.
In response, the Fee launched a number of procedures towards them for undermining the rule of legislation and the values of the EU, particularly a mechanism of “conditionality” of European support, which blocks the cost of stimulus subsidies.
However these topics “usually are not essentially linked” to the agreements that may be discovered on digital sovereignty, the strengthening of protection Europe, a European funding finances and even industrial alliances, argued the French presidency.
The 2 leaders had already discovered widespread floor when Emmanuel Macron acquired Viktor Orban in October 2019, particularly on border safety and the necessity for European protection.
The Elysee, nonetheless, assures that the French president will converse of factors of disagreement and is “not within the behavior of dodging”, whereas the Hungarian LGBT + group known as on him to boost the problem throughout his assembly with Mr. Orban , in an open letter to the French journal Têtu.
As quickly as he arrives in Budapest at 11.30 a.m. native time (10.30 a.m. GMT), Emmanuel Macron can even go to the grave of the thinker Agnes Heller, who died in 2019, an opposition determine he had acquired in Paris in 2018.
Meet the opposition
He can even meet Gergely Karacsony, the mayor of Budapest, in addition to different representatives of the anti-Orban events together with Peter Marki-Zay, the only real opposition candidate who hopes within the April 2022 legislative elections to overthrow the Hungarian Prime Minister, in energy since 2010. Which makes him the longest serving EU chief since Angela Merkel left.
“Mr. Macron, the Hungary that you’re about to go to is certainly a rustic dominated by the acute proper”, known as out the mayor of a district of Budapest, the sociologist Gabor Eross, denouncing “the generalized corruption, the anti-LGBT +, electoral fraud, the oligarchization of the financial system and the huge repression of civil society “.
By receiving Emmanuel Macron after having lately rolled out the pink carpet to Marine Le Pen or Eric Zemmour, two far-right French personalities who’re working for the presidency, “Viktor Orban can exhibit his European significance” nicely past the load of his nation of 9.eight million inhabitants, explains Eszter Petronella Soos, a Hungarian political scientist specializing in France, to AFP.
And on the bilateral degree, “regardless of the variations between a liberal Emmanuel Macron and a conservative Viktor Orban, vital factors of cooperation exist, for instance on vitality coverage between these two supporters of nuclear energy”, feedback Daniel Deak, pro-Orban analyst on the Hungarian Institute of the 21st Century.
© 2021 AFP
