MEPs call to strip Hungary’s EU voting rights amid Orbán’s ‘peace missions’ - POLITICO

Members of the European Parliament demanded Hungary’s EU voting rights be stripped after its Prime Minister’s trips to Russia and China, POLITICO reports.

In a letter obtained by POLITICO, 63 MEPs addressed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel and European Parliament chief Roberta Metsola, saying Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán “has already caused significant damage by exploiting and abusing the role of the Council Presidency.”

Hungary took over the rotating Council of the EU presidency from Belgium on 1 July. Since then, Orbán has launched self-declared “peace missions” to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and Washington and claimed, without authorization, to be representing the EU, the report adds.

“This requires real actions, such as suspending Hungary’s voting rights in the Council, since practice has shown that mere verbal condemnations of this situation have no effect,” the MEPs said in the letter.

On Monday POLITICO’s three sources in the EU said that the European Commission had asked its commissioners not to attend informal ministers’ meetings during the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the EU.

On July 5, Orban met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, where the two sides discussed the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine and potential ways of starting peace negotiations. Earlier, on July 3, Orban was in Kyiv, where he discussed those issues with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. On July 8, PM Orban met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, after which he met former U.S. President Donald Trump in the USA.