According to Government Spokesperson Zoltán Kovács, the most important question with relation to the Sargentini Report is how the parties organise their ranks in the European “chess game”, and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s recent visit to Italy and his negotiations with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini have “designated the correct course”.

On Hungarian M1 television’s Friday evening current affairs program, Mr. Kovács was asked with relation to the fact that the Prime Minister will be taking part in the European Parliament’s plenary session on 11 September, at which the body will be debating the Sargentini Report.

“Just as the pro-immigration forces have organised their ranks on one side under the leadership of French President Emmanuel Macron, so too have the anti-immigration forces that are performing their duty and doing everything to protect Europe’s land and maritime borders on the other”, Mr. Kovács said. “The Sargentini Report is one of the stops in this fight”, he explained.

With relation to the expected outcome of the debate, the Government Spokesperson said: “We will see if the Parliament is wise or not”.

According to Mr. Kovács, the fault-line along which opinions differ the most within the European Union is between the position of the liberal left, which supports immigration, and national, conservative politics, which strongly opposes it.

European Green Party MEP Judith Sargentini prepared the report on the state of the rule of law in Hungary, which was adopted in June by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs with 37 member votes for and 19 against. According to the document, civil liberties are being increasingly restricted in Hungary, in addition to which the report raises the possibility that Budapest should be stripped of its voting rights.

(MTI)