“Viktor Orbán is an example for the U.S.” – Exclusive Interview with Jorge Buxadé

Out of the blue, the new Patriots for Europe bloc in the European Parliament has become the largest national-conservative group in Strasbourg. By most standards, it occupies the center-right political space that Manfred Weber’s European People’s Party (EPP) has vacated by moving left. We have asked the Spanish VOX MEP Jorge Buxadé Villalba for his views on the new conservative cooperation, as well as his take on the Hungarian narrative on key European matters.

Interview conducted by Sergio Velasco

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In Strasbourg during the European Parliament debate, Hungary has become the center of attacks for its alleged rule-of-law violation. Your party, Vox, has often pointed at the double standards, as in your view, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has violated national and international law without being called into account. Could you give us some examples and highlight the reasons behind this inconsistency?

Pedro Sanchez, if he is known for something, is for the control of institutions. Our constitutional system pretends to guarantee the independence of the governing body of judges and he has taken it over completely, changing the laws against the constitution itself. It has taken control of the Constitutional Court, the Court of Auditors and all the bodies that historically were the guarantee of citizens’ rights.

If this had been done by Viktor Orbán in Hungary, he would have been attacked by the European Commission under Article 7 the EU Treaty.

Pedro Sánchez does not have to defend himself against similar attacks because he has an implicit agreement with Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen where Spain will agree to vote in favor of all the measures proposed by the European Commission. In return, she looks the other way concerning the aberrations that Sánchez has done. The Spanish Prime Minister, in order to remain in power, has accepted everything that comes from Brussels, such as the Green Deal, accepts and applies the Migration Pact, that is, whatever Von der Leyen orders him to adopt. In short, Sánchez is a true autocrat and is walking towards tyranny.

I could also mention the cases of corruption that the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) has been associated with. Should have any other EU government been involved in these, they would have suffered the harshest criticism from at least some of the EU commissioners.

While Hungary has been penalized to the tune of 200 million euros for not complying with EU migration rules, when looking at the consequences of illegal immigration in Spain, does this price not look rather like a bargain?

I believe what Viktor Orbán and his government are doing is protecting (all its decisions to be) compliant with Hungarian law and to be also compliant in economic terms.

Despite the fine imposed by the EU (on Hungary), the Spanish case is much worse, since Spain spends way more than that fine, either in airline tickets, healthcare, centers for minors, luxury hotels, subsidies, and so on.

I think Hungary should be rewarded. We have a disastrous system that we sanction those who want to protect European borders, instead of paying Viktor Orbán (his expenses) and thanking him for defending the continent’s borders. Instead, we should be sanctioning governments like Spain, ones that allow in illegal immigrants, while evidently also being complicit with the mafias and with human traffickers. This is 21st century slavery.

On October 9, in Strasbourg we saw how the majority of the political cast attacked Viktor Orbán, yet in your speech you defended him. Why do you think the Hungarian Prime Minister is generating such passion in his opponents?

Orbán is attacked because he has not yielded. It should not be forgotten that in the past he was one of the great figures of the European People’s Party and on many topics he is still holding the same position as he did in the 1990s. However, it is the EPP that has gone radically to the left. Orbán is like the mirror they look into, where they see their own true self, and that is why they want to expel him from political life.

For us he is an example. What we defend is the same he has been defending since he has been Prime Minister – national interests, in his case Hungarian interests.

For Vox it is the same – we are for the interest of the Spanish people, for our economy, for more children to be born, or for safe streets.

Viktor Orbán is capable of withstanding brutal pressure. What we saw in Strasbourg (on October 9) was insane. Not only the lies that he managed to expose, but we also heard barbaric claims (against him) such as allegedly children dying in Hungarian hospitals for lack of care. This level of manipulation is unacceptable. Yet what the Hungarian PM showed during this debate was that he is not only prepared to defend himself, but is also capable of attacking his opponents. Furthermore, there are a lot of people around him – not only members of the Patriots for Europe group, but other sovereigntists, mostly from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group. Therefore, I would like to point out that there are 160 MEPs who would be able to defend Orbán, and that if they joined together they (PfE an ECR) would be the second group in the European Parliament, very close to the EPP.

The People’s Party (PP) in Spain, just like the EPP it belongs to, seems to be moving more and more to the left. Why do you think they follow this strategy instead of allying with the new conservative right?

First and foremost, the People’s Party follows this strategy because they are afraid and this fear has already characterized them for the past 40 years. That is why they have been giving in. Secondly, this is so because there is already a second generation of politicians in the People’s Party that can no longer be defined as center-right. The old politicians of the PP were afraid that Politico or similar newspapers would write an article about them accusing them of being “far right.” Now the new generation of PP politicians have assumed the dogmas of the left in matters of climate fanaticism, migration policy, fiscal policy, solving the demographic problem with immigration, gender ideology, etc.

Histórica reunión de @PatriotsEU, previa a la del Consejo Europeo.

Santiago Abascal, con @MLP_officiel @PM_ViktorOrban @geertwilderspvv @matteosalvinimi @AndrejBabis @latinopoulou @tomvangrieken

Un honor para mí acompañar al Jefe en este nuevo hito. La Europa de las Patrias. pic.twitter.com/PUCgoIlhph

— Jorge Buxadé (@Jorgebuxade) October 17, 2024

We will soon have elections in the U.S. Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán had expressed his unequivocal support for Donald Trump. But would his victory truly challenge the dominance of the European left over national-conservative forces?

A victory of Donald Trump would be a radical change in American policies and in European politics. Trump’s vision that business suffers due to wars is a vision totally contrary to that of the Democrats, who historically want to turn war into a business. We have seen examples of this with Barack Obama and now with Joe Biden.

Obviously, American trade relations with the European Union will also change, but it would also be a breath of fresh air if Trump had recovered his anti-globalist vision or confronted some of the policies emanating from the United Nations. This would be beneficial not only for the United States, but for Europe and the world in general. I am confident of a Donald Trump victory, in the last polls he was doing very well. What I imagine is that if Trump wins, here (in the EU) the first thing that will happen will be a declaration of the European Parliament against his victory, such that we have seen in 2016.

 

Sergio Velasco is a Spanish political scientist, analyst, and political commentator. He is the founder of ‘Filosofía Política’ and a columnist in Spanish, Hungarian, and English-language media.

Featured Photo: Genevieve ENGEL, European Union 2024 – Source : EP