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Michiel Luining about the Hungarian riot and European democracy

The conflict between the Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán and his party Fidesz, on the one hand, the other parties within the European People's Party (EPP), on the other, illustrates the complex functioning of European democracy. Michiel Luining, lecturer at the Institute of Public Administration at Leiden University, discusses the issue Financieel Dagblad (FD).

On 20 March 2019, the European People's Party (EPP), the European group of Christian Democrats, will meet to vote on the withdrawal of the EPP membership of Fidesz, the party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktór Orbán. The reason was a propagandistic poster campaign by Fidesz against the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. On the poster of Fidesz, Juncker was depicted together with big investor George Soros. With that, the impression was given that they want to flood Europe with migrants, which led to the consideration of leaving the EPP by President Orbán.

Slogan

Luining discusses a number of points about the complex functioning of European democracy: ‘’This time it's different’ was the slogan of the 2014 European elections, which also introduced the Spitzencandidates system. Now that it is clear that there is friction within the EPP group, the Spitzencandidates process is uncertain, and European politics is by definition created in different ways, it is tempting to propose a different slogan for the coming elections: 'This time it's complicated’'.

Read the full article in Financieel Dagblad (Dutch).

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