Commentary
Society
Wounds That Won’t Heal: Trauma, Power and Politics in Slovakia – COMMENTARY
16 May 2025
With the 2019 European parliamentary elections finishing last Sunday, populists – led by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán – re-evaluate their possibilities of changing EU politics forever. But what is Orbán’s wisest bet?
Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz has been at the forefront of European populism since at least 2010 when the Hungarian prime minister’s centre-right party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections before repeating its success in 2014 and 2018.
Since that time, many observers have focused on domestic developments, from the drafting of a new constitution to the passage of judicial and electoral reforms to the tightening of control over NGOs. With Fidesz voluntarily and indefinitely suspended from the European People’s Party (EPP), the focus of attention shifted to their European role and the question arises: what is about to happen now that a new European Parliament is elected?
Fidesz Stays With the EPP
Despite their anti-EU rhetoric, Fidesz MEPs have been remarkably loyal to the EPP. The eleven lawmakers have voted with the alliance 98 per cent of the time—more often than their German counterparts, according to Gianni Pittella, an Italian former MEP who led the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) until 2018.
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