The foreign minister said the European People's Party is "pursuing a witch hunt" against Hungary's ruling Fidesz party, its "most successful member".
Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, called it “strange” that the EPP had withdrawn some rights from “one of its best-performing MEPs”, Fidesz delegate Tamás Deutsch.
According to MTI, the minister insisted that if other parties of the EPP family had done “as well as Fidesz did” in the latest European election, “they would now be a much stronger group and could do without support from the Greens and Socialists”. Further, they would not need to “deviate from the values the EPP used to represent when Fidesz first joined”.
Minister Szijjártó said that while the head of the EPP had “made a comparison between an arch Nazi ideologist and the Hungarian prime minister”, and while the Hungarian government had had false charges of anti-Semitism and dictatorship “for the past ten years” thrown at it, when the EPP was faced with “an unpleasant remark” they instantly “take offence and throw a temper tantrum”. The minister called for double standards to be set aside and for the restoration of a “culture of mutual respect”.