“You are not alone, at your side is that far-right international, which has a Prime Minister of Hungary, Mr. [Víktor] Orbán, at the head,” Pedro Sánchez snapped at Santiago Abascal on the 10th in Congress. He then reproached the Vox leader for not criticizing the attitude of his Hungarian ally, the main obstacle to the EU's measures against Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, and, in an unusually harsh tone with a sitting European ruler, he added: “Mr. Orbán, the same one who finances studies, if you can call him that, with this suggestive title: 'How the LGTBI ideology took over the EU.' You see the level, we are all victims of lobby gay”.
He study to which Sánchez alluded – in reality, a 28-page pamphlet that accuses the European institutions of “trying to disrupt and polarize” partners in central and eastern Europe by imposing respect for the rights of sexual minorities – has been published by the Mathias Cornivus Collegium (MCC). It is a private educational center with an ultra-conservative ideology that teaches extracurricular courses with the aim of “promoting patriotism and respect for tradition,” according to its cover letter. The Hungarian Government finances MCC through public oil and medicine companies and the president of its board is Balázs Orbán, political director of the Hungarian Prime Minister's Office.
The vice president of Castilla y León, Juan García-Gallardo, of Vox, gave a conference last January at the MCC headquarters in Budapest under the title: “Spain under siege: conservative responses to the coup d'état”, in which he crossed out Pedro Sánchez as a “puppet in the hands of Brussels bureaucrats.” One of those who shared a round table with García-Gallardo was the Spanish Rodrigo Ballester, former official of the European Commission and director of the MCC European studies center, who simultaneously holds this position with that of commissioner of the Ministry of Education of the Hungarian Government. Ballester is married to a Hungarian leader of Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union, Orbán's party.
Another member of García-Gallardo at the Budapest event was István Kovács, strategic director of the Center for Fundamental Rights, a think tank or ultra-conservative think tank based in Budapest whose motto is “God, Country, Family.” This NGO has just opened its first branch outside of Hungary and the chosen location was precisely Madrid. The inauguration, held on March 20 at the luxurious Palace hotel in the Spanish capital, was attended by Vox's spokesperson in Congress, Pepa Millán, who advocated importing Orbán's policies “in defense of life”; that is, against abortion. In Hungary, women who want to have an abortion are obliged to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus, a measure that García-Gallardo tried to transfer to Castilla y León, although claiming that it would be voluntary.
Sources close to think tank Hungarians recognize that the choice of Spain responds to this country's role as a bridge with Latin America, where the ultra-conservative wave is bordering the traditional right. Also present at the presentation of the Hungarian center in Madrid were former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana—president of the International Democratic Center (IDC), of which Orbán and the Spaniard Alberto Núñez Feijóo are vice presidents—and Jorge Martín Frías, director of Disenso, the Vox foundation. The latter praised the figure of Orbán and presented the Latin American countries as the “reserve of the West”, in the face of the advance of a supposedly radical left. This same Friday, representatives of the Center for Fundamental Rights participated in Madrid in a seminar inaugurated by Abascal and organized by Disenso and The Heritage Foundation, the ideological factory of Trumpism.
The Hungarian center that has recently landed in Spain is in turn the host of the CEPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) which will be held in Budapest on Thursday and Friday of next week. CEPAC is presented as the great platform of the most right wing of the American Republican Party which, maintaining its original headquarters (the last edition was held in February in Washington and served as the setting for the first meeting between Abascal and Donald Trump), in recent years has created franchises in Hungary, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and Israel.
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The Hungarian CEPAC will be inaugurated by Orbán and the two most prominent foreign guests of the organization are the Dutchman Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), winner of last November's elections in the Netherlands; and Santiago Abascal, who will travel to Budapest after learning the result of the Basque elections on Sunday. The importance that the Hungarian Prime Minister attributes to his Spanish guest is proof of the good relationship that exists between the two.
Orbán is the best ally in Europe of former President Trump, who invited him to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida last March. However, the Hungarian prime minister's party is more isolated than ever in the EU due to its closeness to Putin. When the Fidesz deputies left the Popular Group in the European Parliament they became “non-affiliated”, not finding accommodation in either of the two far-right groups: Identity and Democracy (ID), led by the Frenchwoman Marine Le Pen; and ECR (European Reformists and Conservatives) of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. The presence in Le Pen's group of Alternative for Germany (AfD) and his contacts with neo-Nazis make it very difficult for Orbán to join them, so his only option is ECR, the group where Vox also sits. According to sources familiar with the negotiation, Abascal, who traveled to Rome last Tuesday to meet with Meloni, is playing the role of mediator between Orbán and the Italian prime minister so that the Fidesz MEPs can land in a group that, unlike in the previous legislature, it will no longer be dominated by the Poles of Law and Justice, removed from power in Warsaw.
If Orbán has seen in Abascal his bridge with Latin America and Meloni's group, the Spaniard does not hide his admiration for the Hungarian. Vox has copied from Orbán a tax reform proposal that cuts the tax on large families with large fortunes by 80%. On the other hand, it leaves large families whose income threshold is so low that they do not have to pay personal income tax without aid. The system is very different from that implemented by the Polish ultra-conservatives in 2019: a monthly subsidy of 115 euros per minor child regardless of income. The difference is that Polish conservatism has Catholic roots and Orbán's has Calvinist roots. The latter is the one that Abascal has taken as a model.
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