Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán's break with the European People's Party threatens to open a dangerous geographic gap within the EU, with Central and Eastern European countries lining up around left and right groups at odds with their current Western counterparts. .
For now, the departure of Orbán's party, Fidesz, from the popular group will mean an erosion of the Christian Democrat family, which has dominated Brussels for more than two decades.
But the Hungarian upheaval can also extend to the Socialists, the second largest European group, which has some suspicious formations of little respect for the rule of law.
Orbán has announced his intention to stand up to the EPP as soon as he was forced to withdraw his MEPs from the popular group in the European Parliament after a change in internal rules that pointed to the expulsion of Fidesz.
Last Thursday, after breaking with his old European political family, the Hungarian Prime Minister proclaimed his intention to “build a European democratic right that welcomes European citizens who do not want emigrants, who do not want multiculturalism, who have not fallen into madness. LGTBQ, who defend European Christian traditions, who respect the sovereignty of nations and who do not see their nations as part of the past but of their future ”.
The Hungarian's proposal supposes an amendment to the totality of the multicultural and inclusive values that the left parties vigorously defend and that have been taken up by almost all the conservative parties in the western part of the EU.
Orbán intends to break the seams of the EPP by the ultra-conservative and nationalist side that has emerged in many European countries.
His first contacts have been in Italy, with the League of Matteo Salvini, and the Brothers of Italy, of Georgia Meloni.
And it will foreseeably seek allies in Poland, Romania or Slovenia, among other countries.
"He can do us a lot of harm, because Orbán is smart, he knows us very well and has a lot of prestige in the countries close to Hungary," confesses a source from the popular group given the gap that the Hungarian prime minister can open on the eastern flank of the conservative training.
The EPP has won elections to the European Parliament since 1999 (four consecutive terms), has held the presidency of the European Commission since 2004, and held the presidency of the European Council from its premiere in 2009 to 2019. Conservatives owe much of that power to barn of votes of the 12 countries that joined the club between 2004 and 2013, during the great enlargement of the EU to the East.
In the 2019 European elections, the EPP won 43% of its 187 seats (including Orbán's 13) in those countries, a figure higher than that of the socialist group (33% of seats) or the Liberals (29%).
The latent geographical split for years and aggravated by Orbán's demise threatens to put an end to two decades of conservative hegemony in an open confrontation between the Western parties of the Christian Democratic tradition and their allies in Central and Eastern Europe, more prone to illiberal tendencies. or even authoritarian.
Antonio López-Istúriz, MEP and secretary general of the EPP since 2002, acknowledges that "there is an issue with eastern Europe, due in large part to the fact that these countries come from a different tradition."
López-Istúriz warns, however, that the gap between East and West extends beyond the conservative family.
"This difference does not understand ideologies and affects the right, center or left groups equally, which should be taken as a signal of attention for all," says the secretary general of the PPE.
Shada Islam, founder of the analysis firm New Horizons Project and visiting professor at the College of Europe, believes Orbán's ideas have even spread beyond his geographic or political area of influence.
“Let's be frank, Orbán's vision of Europe as a white and Christian club and his hatred towards immigrants, Muslims, Jews and gays is not limited to Fidesz, it has been embraced more or less clearly by many European political parties considered, say, normal, ”says Islam.
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The popular warn that Orbán's departure will raise the bar for demands in other parties, which also host ultra-nationalist or Eurosceptic formations.
The European Socialist Party already temporarily froze its relations with the Social Democratic Party (PSD) in Romania in 2019 due to its alleged lack of respect for the rule of law.
The doubts also extend to the Socialists of Slovakia, Bulgaria or Malta, where the Socialist Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, resigned after the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana, who was investigating corruption cases linked to his government.
And in the liberal family is the Czech Prime Minister, Andrej Bavis, accused of conflicts of interest for having channeled European funds to an industrial conglomerate allegedly controlled by himself.
Orbán could postulate himself as a catalyst for those currents that on the right and left distrust the supranational integration represented by the EU and advocate for national sovereignty sometimes bordering on protectionism and xenophobia.
Boris Vezjak, a philosopher and professor at the University of Mariborg in Slovenia, doubts that the Hungarian prime minister will succeed in creating a true alternative.
"Fidesz may end up being marginal in the eyes of the political majority within the European Parliament and the general public," says Vezjak.
“Like it or not, it will be treated as a more radical Party and opposed to European democratic values and principles.
Playing the role of victim is not going to convince anyone ”.
The objective of a large part of the PPE, in any case, was to avoid this external threat, holding out the pulse with Orbán until November of this year, to hold a programmatic congress in which the model to be followed for the next decade would be decided.
Popular sources acknowledge that partisan sensitivities of a turn to the right similar to that advocated by Orbán coexist in the party, with the Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, and the Prime Minister of Slovenia, Janez Jansa, as prominent representatives of the hard wing.
The choice between the Christian Democratic tradition or the alternative proposed by Orbán would have been resolved, according to those who defended the congressional formula, in an orderly and debated manner, and not abrupt as has happened.
But events have rushed.
And the risk of a curtain of misunderstanding emerging between the east and west of the EU is trading higher than ever since the 2004 enlargement.
