I am pleased to say that my group in the European Parliament, Renew Europe, last month voted to expel MEP Viktor Uspaskich from the group.
He is an MEP from Lithuania and it will seem a world away from the tribulations of Dubliners but it may be interesting nevertheless for a particular reason.
He referred to gay and trans people as “perverts” and “deviants” in a Facebook video on January 10th.
He apologised for his comments and claimed, unconvincingly, that they were taken out of context and had been lost in translation (Russian is his mother tongue).
As an aside, this isn’t the only crazy thing that Uspaskich has been saying recently. He claimed in December that a certain mineral water if consumed in sufficient doses could cure Covid-19. The company selling the water is owned by his children. Pity it doesn’t cure verbal diarrhoea.
I bring the question of Uspaskich’s expulsion up because it is worth remembering that Fine Gael’s group in the European Parliament, EPP, have not expelled Viktor Orban’s group. The issue comes up from time to time and there are denunciations but nothing ever happens.
Attacks in Hungary on basic freedoms inspired the European Parliament to insist on ‘rule of law’ conditionality in the next budget. Hungary’s attacks on the LGBT community have been widely reported.
Last month, the Hungarian Parliament approved a package of new measures including a bar on same sex couples from adopting children.
In May, a ban on legally changing one’s gender came into force which will expose transgender people to discrimination. Of course, I have no issue with protecting traditional values but this shouldn’t require discrimination against minorities.
The Hungarian constitution already specified that marriage could only be between a man and a woman. Changes last month inserted the following: ‘The mother is a woman, the father is a man.’
The Fidesz MEP, Jozef Szajer, who tried to evade a police raid at a lockdown-busting gay orgy in November 2020, by shinning down a drainpipe only served to underline the hypocrisy at the heart of Orban’s movement.
The degree to which Hungary in particular has departed from EU values was demonstrated in an opinion piece that appeared on a Government-supporting website called Origo.hu in December. The head of a Government agency, Szilard Demeter, wrote the following;
“Europe is the gas-chamber of Soros: The toxic gas, which is mortal to the European way of life floods from the capsule of the multicultural open society, and we, European nations are doomed to fight for our last sip of air, trampling each other and clambering on one another.
The liberaryans now want to expel the Poles and the Hungarians from the political community, we still have rights as members. We are the new Jews.”
This gives a flavour of the political rhetoric of the Orban government. It is unforgiveable that the EPP Party in the European Parliament has not expelled Orban’s Fidesz party (it is merely suspended).
Fine Gael MEPs have called for the expulsion of Orban’s party from the EPP although in December they passed on the opportunity to co-sign a letter from other EPP delegations to this effect. Nevertheless, the contrast with the immediate expulsion of Mr Uspaskich by Renew Europe is fairly clear.
The issue is important because it goes to the heart of the question that is often asked - what binds the EU together?
Today, what binds us together as Europeans is shared values. It matters because we have to agree a way to make Member States adhere to the rules; it matters when the EU is surrounded by Xi, Putin, Erdogan and Bolsonaro. A community of values, committed to a free press, the separation of powers and free assembly, really matters when democracy, the rule of law and human rights are in retreat in so many parts of the globe.
That is why I am proud that my group acted so quickly in the case of Viktor Uspaskich.
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