The European Parliamentary elections next spring will decide about the continent’s future, Hungarian House Speaker Laszlo Kover told public news channel M1 on Wednesday evening, Voice of Europe reports.
In a joint interview with Marek Kuchcinski, head of Poland’s Sejm, Kover said that the European elections will change the composition of both the EP and the European Commission, which will then “change the attitudes of Brussels”.
Kover said that low turnout in previous European elections suggests that “a European identity cannot be created to replace national identities”. “People cannot understand and are not interested in remote things,” he insisted.
The 2019 elections may bring “a significant shift towards (national) sovereignty”, Kover said and voiced hope that “the aberrant Left” will be suppressed.
He said that the community’s problems such as geographic divisions within or international challenges can only be addressed when the majority of European decision makers “are again on the ground of normalcy”. “To achieve that we need straightforward politicians that respect their voters,” Kover said.
Concerning the EP’s recent Sargentini report on the rule of law in Hungary, Kover said that its adoption was part of the European election campaign and “an attempt to exert pressure on Hungary” through “putting us in a difficult situation at home”. He added that “we must report to our own voters only”.
Kuchcinski said that Western countries are aimed at “diverting attention from their own problems” through “finding fault” with other countries. They also aim to “weaken” the Polish and Hungarian economies which develop a lot more dynamically than western European countries. But soon, he said, those countries “will have to take us in serious account”.
Kuchcinski said that migration will be Europe’s gravest issue in the next few years, in terms of security, labour and social policies. Migrants should be assisted but in their homelands, he added.