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Viktor Orbán: All bridges torn down
Photo: NurPhoto / Getty Images
Manfred Weber wanted to play his favorite role again.
"I am a bridge builder, and I will always be one," said the head of the European People's Party (EPP) in the EU Parliament on Wednesday in a virtual group meeting.
No fewer than 14 heads of national delegations urged him to oust the Fidesz MPs - the partisans of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who in his country aligns the media, slanders oppositionists, and undermines the rule of law.
"But I refused," said Weber, according to participants.
Instead, the CSU man once again built a bridge for his people.
But it crumbled as soon as it was built.
The policy of hope and appeasement that the CDU and CSU in particular have pursued against Orbán for years now also lies in ruins.
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Picture of the past: Weber and Orbán 2015
Photo: Szilard Koszticsak / dpa
The EPP MPs, including those from the CDU and CSU, voted on Wednesday on a change to the parliamentary group's rules of procedure: It should make it possible in future to suspend not just individual MPs but entire national delegations - but without throwing them out for good.
The group would then have reached where the EPP party as a whole has been since March 2019 when it suspended Fidesz membership.
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