Yesterday, Project Syndicate published two articles, one by Guy Verhofstadt and an interview with George Soros. Appearing by curious coincidence on the same day, the two figures claim that the democratically elected prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, is a “dictator” and that the coronavirus protection law “clearly violate[s] European law” and allows the PM to “rule by decree indefinitely” and resembles "Adolf Hitler’s Enabling Act of 1933.”
Apparently, neither of them got the memo from European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova saying that “Hungary has not adopted any such decree that would contradict European regulations.”
Project Syndicate clearly serves as a mouthpiece for the liberal, open society-inspired world view and often as Soros’ own publishing platform. In Monday’spiece, which is essentially Soros interviewing himself, we get a glimpse inside his vivid imagination: Anyone who doesn’t share his love for radical, open society ideology is a dictator, including Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán.
After the odd claim from a supplicant interviewer that the EU is Soros’ “home,” which he “cares about so much,” the article turns to the real purpose of this “interview.” Soros has another plan that he wants to push. It’s the Soros plan 2.0 and it involves more debt for the European Union.
You recall the Soros plan to address the migration crisis in which he asserted that "the EU has to accept at least a million asylum-seekers annually for the foreseeable future; [a]nd, to do that, it must share the burden fairly.” To finance that, the EU would have raise funds through debt.
Now, the Soros plan 2.0 proposes a perpetual bond. “The kind of bonds that I have proposed would,” he says, “be issued by the EU as a whole, would automatically be proportional, and would remain so eternally.” He would push debt instruments onto the EU to finance Europe’s economic recovery.
The notion that all of this is completely devoid of any self-interest defies credibility.
But Guy Verhofstadt doesn’t disappoint either. “Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,” he writes in his little solo at Project Syndicate, “has used the COVID-19 crisis as pretext to push through legislation that enables him to rule by decree indefinitely. This is Europe’s first such dictatorial démarche since Adolf Hitler’s Enabling Act of 1933.”
The liberal leader likes to play the Hitler card. Never mind that it’s insulting, the details are utterly incorrect for many reasons. For example, “indefinitely” doesn’t conform to the actual text, which states that the measure lasts only until parliament lifts it.
Neither one of them, it seems, heard Věra Jourová, the European Commission’s vice-president in charge of transparency and values, who officially confirmed that there is no reason to take legal action against Hungary over its response to the coronavirus pandemic, as the measures are in line with EU law.
“I am not worried yet,” Commissioner Jourová said.
But Verhofstadt and Soros, as we’ve seen, are not ones to let facts get in the way.
And at around the same time we see these two articles published by Project Syndicate, we begin to see a resurrection of the old charges against Hungary of anti-Semitism and Roma discrimination.
Meanwhile, here in Hungary, we’ve been working hard to flatten the curve, save lives and ease the economic hardship. We appreciate those in the European Union who are focused on the same and trying to help.