Orbán calls Martin Schulz a communist after Schulz called his and Kaczyński's reintegration into the EU hopeless

"Nice to see that Martin Schulz came back from retirement. Now he wants to decide who is European and who is not. It seems that some people just can’t let go of communism" – Viktor Orbán wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, after an interview with the former president of the European Parliament was published on Tuesday. In it, among other things, Schulz said that including Orbán and leaders like him in EU politics was unrealistic.

Schulz made a number of remarks about Viktor Orbán in his interview with Frankfurter Rundschau, which was first noticed by hvg.hu. According to the German politician, the trend of right-wing conservative or even nationalist forces coming to power all over the world started 20 years ago with Silvio Berlusconi, and was then continued by politicians such as Viktor Orbán, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro, Jarosław Kaczyński or Rodrigo Duterte.

What unites these leaders, he said, is that they all think that once they are in the majority, they own the whole country, and those who oppose them are not competitors but enemies who must be eradicated. According to Schulz, this is a fascist mindset that questions the very principles of democracy. He also said that Manfred Weber's (of the centre-right EPP) idea that Orbán or Kaczyński could be reintegrated into EU politics was not realistic, since they have no connection with Europe.

Schulz believes that the only way to win over such politicians is with money, but thinks that even that might not be possible with Orbán, because he gets it from the Chinese and the Russians.

The German politician added that Weber is currently steering the European Parliament into a situation where the identity of the next president of the Commission depends on the Orbáns and the Kaczynskis. He said that this was also causing tensions within the CDU/CSU and that if this was indeed the future direction, then the next EP elections would be interesting. Schulz also said that he would be curious to see how Von der Leyen would react to the path Weber chose if the politician will indeed stick to the path he chose.