Hungary’s governing party has announced it will no longer seek to join the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament after the group welcomed an extremist, anti-Hungarian party from neighboring Romania.
The far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) has announced that its MEPs who won seats in the European Parliament elections earlier this month will join the EU group.
In reaction to the news, Fidesz group leader Máté Kocsis wrote on his social media page:
“The extremist anti-Hungarian Romanian AUR has been accepted into the ECR group. There is no way Fidesz should sit in the same group as such a party in the European Parliament! No way!”
AUR made several anti-Hungarian statements in the past, including in its campaign in the European Parliament. Among others, George Simion, president of the AUR, called the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) an “ugly, chauvinistic creation.” At a campaign event in Transylvania, the politician also said that the RMDSZ party was the “political enemy” of the AUR at the national level.
The AUR has been sending anti-Hungarian messages for years and is one of the main organizers of the chauvinist, anti-Hungarian campaign against the military cemetery in Uz Valley.
AUR representative Dan Tanasa has launched hundreds of lawsuits in recent years against the use of Hungarian-language signs in public places in Transylvania, winning several of them.
Hunor Kelemen, president of the RMDSZ, has on several occasions called the AUR an enemy of Hungarians. In the June 9 European elections, AUR was the distant second behind a Social Democrat-Liberal coalition, garnering 15 percent of the votes, which translates into 6 MEP seats out of Romania’s total 33.
