Interview: Hungary to remain pro-sovereign EU member state after Orban's election win: expert

BUDAPEST, April 10 (Xinhua) -- After his third consecutive win in the general elections on April 8, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Hungary will remain in a pro-sovereign group of the European Union, former foreign minister of Hungary Peter Balazs told Xinhua in an interview on Tuesday.

"From the EU's perspective, the victory of Orban means that a government that is opposed to closer integration has become stronger," Balazs explained. "They are the so-called pro-sovereign countries, and few countries belong to this group for the moment: the Hungarians, the Poles, the Greek, and not much elsewhere. This policy has failed in the Netherlands and in France, where it is strong, i.e. England, they leave," he added.

The expert, who also had been a European Commissioner wondered: "The important question: which camp will grow? We'll have to watch the Italians closely and the Czech, this will determine if this group, that is in minority, will grow or not in the future?"

According to him, the economically and politically strong center, the French-German axis will lead the way in the EU, leaving the pro-sovereign countries such as Hungary to stay a minority.

Balazs spoke to Xinhua after general elections, in which Viktor Orban consolidated his power by winning 133 or 134 seats of the 199-seat Hungarian parliament according to official but partial results. The final result is to be published on Saturday.

"One thought about the domestic policy: I think it will be tainted by tensions. Due to the disproportionate nature of the election system, the Orban government received a two-third majority when they received less than half of the vote of the Hungarian people," Balazs said.

From the foreign policy's aspect, Hungary will still go on with its opening policies towards China, Russia and the Arabic countries, but it is a small landlocked country that cannot achieve major goals alone, without the full support of the European Union in this matter, according to Balazs.

"And besides Poland, Orban has no real foreign supporters. He did not even manage to get a German Christian-democrat politician to back him up in the campaign," he pointed.

"This shows that even within the V4 (the Visegrad countries: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia), the division will continue: the Hungarians and the Poles will turn against the EU, the Czech and the Slovaks, on the other hand will seek to come closer to the EU, especially the Slovaks, who are also member of the eurozone," he added.

So the V4 is not united while the EU is standing before a great change. The planning of the next seven-years budget is starting, and the planning of the budget is the most important act of the EU because that is where the different priorities will take form, according to the expert on European affairs.

"That is when they decide what to finance from the common money, and that will define the direction of the EU for the next seven years," Balazs underlined.

He stressed that it looked like that this direction would be quite different from the earlier ones: "According to what we know from the different documents, a change in priorities seems quite obvious. The EU will not focus on financing the poorer extremities of its territory, but rather will finance mostly the competitiveness and safety of its core."

"This means the countries mostly benefitting from this will be those who integrate the center, the tool for which is the introduction of the Euro, the participation to the Schengen area and the acceptance of a common refugee policy, and it seems that Orban wants to keep Hungary away from all of the above, which will leave Hungary at the periphery of the EU," the expert concluded. Enditem