A leaked video recording of opposition Momentum MEP Anna Donáth shows her “boasting” about having regular informal consultations with European Commision Vice Chair Vera Jourová despite Donáth’s recent denial of such consultations during a public debate.
Justice Minister Judit Varga said on Saturday that she had recently had a live televised debate with Donáth where the opposition MEP denied that she frequently consulted with Jourová about Hungary and that she had a role in the “coordinated attacks against Hungary by Brussels”.
At the same time, news channel HírTV has acquired and made public an internal Momentum video chat recording showing Donáth “boasting” about having informal consultations with Jourova “at least every three days in order to ensure that the Hungarian government’s decisions have political consequences,” Minister Varga said.
In reaction, Donáth said on Facebook that “European commissioners are not uncontactable, unlike members of the Hungarian government, and one does not have to beg them to have a chat”. “Jourová and myself are in the same party family and we are both working to build a fair, humane, and safe state based on the rule of law,” she added. Donáth said that in March when the Hungarian government was “fighting” for the domestic and international approval of a law giving special powers to the government during the first wave of the epidemic Jourová asked for her opinion, as an elected MEP of Hungary, several times.
Meanwhile, Minister Varga called on Donáth to “leave politics” over her “publicly denying” her communications with Jourova earlier, and insisted that the MEPs of the Hungarian opposition had “represented the values of Brussels” during the first wave of coronavirus and “spread fake news about the Hungarian government’s coronavirus measures under a pre-written scenario”.