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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Compromise floated to defuse EU row with Orban

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BRUSSELS/BERLIN: Germany’s conservatives floated a compromise in a long-running dispute between Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban (pictured) and the EU’s centre-right grouping that could avert his party’s expulsion over concerns about Budapest’s authoritarian drift.


Orban, a feisty nationalist, was due in Brussels on Wednesday for a meeting to decide the fate of his Fidesz party after 13 sister organisations in the European People’s Party (EPP) urged its expulsion.


Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, head of Germany’s Christian Democrats, the largest party in the EPP, said Fidesz should be suspended, but not expelled, for violating the grouping’s values with contested judiciary reforms and anti-immigration campaigns.


“As long as Fidesz does not fully restore trust there cannot be normal full membership,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said. A membership “freeze” would be an option, added Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is the frontrunner to eventually replace German Chancellor Angela Merkel.


Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Bavaria’s premier Markus Soeder, both EPP members, supported her position, sources close to Kramp-Karrenbauer said.


But, as Orban’s decision to attend in person what would normally be a routine administrative meeting demonstrates, the stakes are high: EPP membership for Fidesz confers mainstream respectability and influence that other populist parties lack.


The decision poses a particular headache for Manfred Weber, the EPP’s lead candidate in May’s European Parliament elections, whose chances of succeeding Jean-Claude Juncker as head of the executive European Commission would be reduced without the votes of Fidesz’s European lawmakers, of whom there are currently 12.


On Wednesday Juncker, who is also from the EPP, repeated his call for Fidesz to be kicked out of the grouping. — Reuters


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