Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has called on the propagators of a recent "disinformation campaign against Hungary" to apologize to the Hungarian people.
In a letter addressed to EPP members and leaders, PM Orbán said Hungary is the victim of a “baseless, unprecedented attack and disinformation campaign”.
The prime minister said this campaign had been waged when lives were on the line due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. The “attack” on Hungary was not the first, he said in the letter. But it was the “most despicable and most cynical”.
PM Orbán said those who had taken part in the campaign had spread “falsehoods and lies”, such as the claim that parliament had been shut down. He said the reality was that parliament’s powers had actually been enhanced, adding that the body had the authority to end the state of emergency declared in March and repeal any of the government’s special measures.
The prime minister lamented that it was not just the conservative grouping’s “formal political opponents” but also “certain EPP politicians” who had engaged in “spreading fake news”. EPP leader Donald Tusk had “even gone as far as to draw a parallel between” the measures introduced in Hungary and Nazi legal scholar Carl Schmitt, he added.