Hungarian Right-Wing Media Slam Brussels And Berlin Over “Hysteria” Surrounding Poland

Hungarian right-wing journalists characterize the steps taken to condemn the new Polish government as carbon copies of a series of earlier hearings and infringement procedures launched in Hungary’s case after the right-wing electoral victory in 2010, press reviewer budapost.eu reported. Those who are terrified of the prospect of a United States of Europe should realize that this entity has already come to life: it is governed from Berlin and its leader is called Angela Merkel, the Hungarian pro-government analysts warn.

In conservative daily Magyar Idők, commentator Zoltán Kottász suggests that the debate in the European Parliament, as well as the rule of law probe launched by the European Commission, are expressions of a drive to set up a European super state. Each time a government is formed which values national sovereignty first and foremost, he continues, Brussels and the liberal media clamp down and accuse it of dictatorial inclinations. Poland is even more unfortunate than Hungary, he suggests, as the attacks came only two months after the new government was sworn in. Its Hungarian counterpart “had been given enough time to look around their new offices and find out how to operate the cappuccino function on their coffee machines” before facing similar charges.

On the other hand, Kottász sees Poland as more fortunate, because the serious opposition parties (the former governing PO or Civic Platform) reject interference in their domestic affairs — a hint at most left-wing Hungarian MEPs who supported resolutions condemning the Hungarian government within the European Parliament. In another article Kottász suggests that Germany has evolved from the economic engine of Europe into the political powerhouse of our continent, and it decides on such issues as the fate of Greece or whether Brussels should punish rogue Poland. Last week Kottász was already warning in Magyar Idők of ‘a drive to set up a European super state’. Now he takes aim specifically at the German chancellor, accusing her of persisting in a misguided migration policy. ‘Merkel has authority over matters of life and death. And this is Europe’s great tragedy’, the author alleges.

Berlin’s percieved influence over the region is also the subject of an article written by Zsolt Bayer in conservative Magyar Hírlap, the other nationwide pro-government conservative daily. The well-known right-wing pundit publishes what appears to be the first part of a series of articles on Poland, emphasizing its history of struggles with Germany and Russia. Bayer evokes the battle of Grunwald in 1410, when a Polish-Latvian army, supposedly boosted by troops from other eastern European nations including Hungary, crushed the army of the German-Prussian Teutonic Knights. He suggests that Poland’s fate is once again in the spotlight of great power  diplomacy, as what he calls the ‘core countries’ of western Europe entertain a growing fear of the possible rise of a strong and independent alliance of East-Central European states.

via budapost.eu, magyaridok.hu and magyarhirlap.hu photo: Dániel Ránki – index.hu