Hungarian opposition leader Magyar walks to Romania, courting ethnic Hungarians
BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar walked across the border to Romania on Saturday after a week-long journey, in a attempt to win support of the ethnic Hungarians in Romania and appeal to conservative voters in the run-up to the 2026 elections.
Magyar's centre-right Tisza party emerged last year to mount the most serious challenge to nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban since he rose to power in 2010.
Most opinion polls now put Tisza ahead of Orban's Fidesz party with the next parliamentary elections due in early 2026. No date has been set yet.
Carrying Hungary's national flag, Magyar walked across the border on Saturday morning with a group of supporters.
"We are not going (to Romania) to escalate tensions or to cause any harm to our Hungarian brothers and sisters living there. We are going there to express our solidarity," Magyar said on May 14 when he set out on foot in hiking gear.
On his way to the border, Magyar stopped in small towns to talk to rural voters, who have traditionally supported conservative Orban.
Orban's government provides financial support to ethnic Hungarian communities in Romania and in 2014 granted the right to vote to Hungarians living abroad. In the last election in 2022 94% of these voters supported Fidesz.
The latest poll by the Publicus think tank, published on Friday, showed Tisza with 43% support among decided voters in Hungary while Fidesz had 36%.
Magyar announced his march on May 12 after Orban flagged he could cooperate with Romanian hard-right presidential candidate George Simion ahead of the May 18 election there.
The RMDSZ party representing ethnic Hungarians in Romania, said Simion's win would pose a threat to minorities' rights and urged its voters to support centrist Nicusor Dan who ended up winning the vote.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Hungary's Orban lauds MAGA advance after Nawrocki's win in Poland
BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday that nationalist Karol Nawrocki's victory in Poland's presidential election was "fantastically good", hailing the success of an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump. Eurosceptic Karol Nawrocki narrowly won the Polish presidential election on Sunday, delivering a big blow to the efforts of Donald Tusk's centrist government to cement Warsaw's pro-European orientation. "From a Hungarian perspective, I think the outcome is fantastically good, as there is a pro-Ukrainian, pro-war, pro-Brussels liberal government operating in Poland," Orban said in an interview on state Kossuth radio. Orban, also an ally of Trump, said he interpreted Nawrocki's victory as the "continuation of the patriot's advance." "One could also say that the 'Washington Express' has arrived in Warsaw," Orban said, alluding to Nawrocki's election as a victory for European conservatives inspired by Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. Both Tusk's government and its conservative nationalist predecessor have been staunch supporters of Ukraine in the war triggered by Russia's 2022 invasion and have been critical of Orban's tilt towards Moscow. Nawrocki has said Poland must continue to support Kyiv's war effort, but in a break with the policy of previous governments in Warsaw, he opposes NATO membership for Ukraine. For his part, Orban has refused to send weapons to Ukraine since the start of the war and kept close relations with Moscow. Orban publicly endorsed Nawrocki ahead of the second round of Poland's election.
20 hours ago
EU court urged to rule against Hungary's anti-LGBTQ+ law
BUDAPEST, Hungary -- The advocate general for the European Union's highest court on Thursday urged the court to rule that Hungary violated the bloc's laws and fundamental values when it passed legislation barring the availability of LGBTQ+ content to minors under 18. The non-binding opinion from the European Court of Justice's Advocate General, Tamara Capeta, states that the legislative changes adopted by Hungary's right-wing populist government violate several rights protected by the EU, 'namely the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sex and sexual orientation, the respect for private and family life, the freedom of expression and information, as well as the right to human dignity.' Hungary's law, adopted in 2021 by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's ruling Fidesz party, prohibited the display of content to minors that depicts homosexuality or gender change, while also providing harsher penalties for crimes of pedophilia. The government has argued its policies, including a more recent law and constitutional amendment that effectively ban the popular Budapest Pride event, seek to protect children from what it calls 'sexual propaganda.' But critics of the legislation have compared it to Russia's gay propaganda law of 2013, and say it conflates homosexuality with pedophilia as part of a campaign ploy to mobilize Fidesz's conservative voter base. In her opinion, Capeta rejected Hungary's justification that the measures are aimed at protecting children, since the legislation 'prohibits portrayal of ordinary lives of LGBTI people, and is not limited to shielding minors from pornographic content, which was prohibited by the law in Hungary already.' She also wrote that Hungary has not offered any proof that content which portrays the ordinary lives of LGBTQ+ people has a negative effect on the healthy development of minors. 'Consequently, those amendments are based on a value judgment that homosexual and non-cisgender life is not of equal value or status' to heterosexual life, Capeta wrote. She urged the EU court to rule in favor of the bloc's executive commission — which launched an infringement procedure against Hungary over the law shortly after it was passed — on all counts. Opinions by advocates general are often but not always followed by the European Court of Justice, which will make a final ruling on the case at a later date.
San Francisco Chronicle
20 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
EU court urged to rule against Hungary's anti-LGBTQ+ law
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — The advocate general for the European Union's highest court on Thursday urged the court to rule that Hungary violated the bloc's laws and fundamental values when it passed legislation barring the availability of LGBTQ+ content to minors under 18. The non-binding opinion from the European Court of Justice's Advocate General, Tamara Capeta, states that the legislative changes adopted by Hungary's right-wing populist government violate several rights protected by the EU, 'namely the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sex and sexual orientation, the respect for private and family life, the freedom of expression and information, as well as the right to human dignity.' Hungary's law, adopted in 2021 by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's ruling Fidesz party, prohibited the display of content to minors that depicts homosexuality or gender change, while also providing harsher penalties for crimes of pedophilia. The government has argued its policies, including a more recent law and constitutional amendment that effectively ban the popular Budapest Pride event, seek to protect children from what it calls 'sexual propaganda.' But critics of the legislation have compared it to Russia's gay propaganda law of 2013, and say it conflates homosexuality with pedophilia as part of a campaign ploy to mobilize Fidesz's conservative voter base. In her opinion, Capeta rejected Hungary's justification that the measures are aimed at protecting children, since the legislation 'prohibits portrayal of ordinary lives of LGBTI people, and is not limited to shielding minors from pornographic content, which was prohibited by the law in Hungary already.' She also wrote that Hungary has not offered any proof that content which portrays the ordinary lives of LGBTQ+ people has a negative effect on the healthy development of minors. 'Consequently, those amendments are based on a value judgment that homosexual and non-cisgender life is not of equal value or status' to heterosexual life, Capeta wrote. She urged the EU court to rule in favor of the bloc's executive commission — which launched an infringement procedure against Hungary over the law shortly after it was passed — on all counts. Opinions by advocates general are often but not always followed by the European Court of Justice, which will make a final ruling on the case at a later date.
