One more controversy.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban defended his vision of a "single-gender Hungarian race" this weekend, in a speech at the summer school in Baile Tusnad, in Romanian Transylvania, where a large Hungarian community resides.
The leader touched on the war in Ukraine and also “the other challenges that Hungary is facing”, in particular migration.
"We move, we work elsewhere, we mix within Europe," said the 59-year-old nationalist and ultra-conservative leader.
"But we don't want to be a mixed race", a "multi-ethnic" people who would mix with "non-Europeans", he said.
Viktor Orban made several references to the conspiracy theory of the “great replacement”, according to him it is a “maneuver” set up by the “internationalist left” to “say that the European population is already “a mixed race”.
Strong political reactions
These remarks sparked a controversy within the political sphere, described as “senseless racism” by Katalin Cesh.
The elected representative of the Momentum Movement, a centrist party, posted a message of support on Twitter for non-white people in Hungary: "Your skin color may be different, you may come from Europe or elsewhere, but you are one of us, and we are proud of you.
Diversity strengthens the nation, it does not weaken it”.
Several other elected officials or anonymous were indignant on social networks.
Romanian MP Alin Mituța of the Renew Europe movement defends this position and goes further: “Talking about racial or ethnic purity, especially in a region as mixed as Central and Eastern Europe, is totally illusory and dangerous.
Just like Mr. Orban, ”he laments.
“Big news: we ALL come from mixed racial and cultural backgrounds.
This is one of the great distinctive features of Europeans,” the politician underlines.
Criticisms which are not limited to the Hungarian and Romanian political sphere while the leader is not at his first skid.
In December 2021, following an interview with Viktor Orban, Emmanuel Macron returned during a press conference to the "disagreements" with the current Prime Minister on "the rule of law, respect for minorities, the fight against discrimination and corruption”.
Recidivist polemicist
In 2020, Viktor Orban was accused of racism towards the Roma community on social networks.
At the time, the Supreme Court of Hungary decided that around sixty Roma families should be compensated, because their children had been victims of segregation at school.
“If I lived in this village, I would wonder how it is possible that members of an ethnic group who live with me in the same community receive such an amount of money without having earned it, while I kill myself in the work all day, ”responded the Prime Minister.
Since his return to power in 2010, Viktor Orban has transformed his country by implementing "illiberal" reforms, based on the "defense of a Christian Europe".
In particular, he attacked migrants from Africa and the Middle East and the NGOs that came to their aid, tightening the right to asylum and erecting barriers at the borders.
This has earned Hungary several condemnations by the Court of Justice of the EU.