A sovereignty protection bill to be tabled in autumn "against left-wing journalists, pseudo-NGOs and dollar politicians" in Hungary

The parliamentary group of Hungary’s governing parties, Fidesz-KDNP have been holding an off-site meeting in Esztergom for the past two days.

On Thursday, Máté Kocsis, the re-elected leader of Fidesz' parliamentary group, and István Simicskó, the leader of KDNP's parliamentary group, held a press conference on the topics covered during the meeting.

Máté Kocsis said that at the meeting they watched the educational video published in Sweden entitled The EU and Democracy, which opens with a speech by Márton Gulyás of Partizán (Hungarian independent web-based medium). According to Kocsis, MPs reacted with "boisterous laughter". The Fidesz group leader called the statements made in the film "at the very least opinion-based" and said the faction was completely baffled by the situation.

Kocsis does not understand how Sweden can expect "the Hungarian parliament to enthusiastically support their NATO membership". Therefore, "we could not take a decision in favour of Sweden's accession at the faction meeting," he said. He sees "little chance" that the Hungarian parliament will vote on it this autumn.

So why don't they simply vote no on this in parliament instead of delaying the vote? – the question was posed to Kocsis, who said the answer was simple: they are pro-NATO, they want NATO to be stronger and they want the Swedes to be members. But this is a diplomatic matter, and the Swedes "have to come here first", Kocsis added.

They also discussed defending the country's sovereignty at length during the two-day meeting, and concluded that

"Our economic, cultural and political sovereignty is under attack,"

Kocsis said.

According to him, one example of such an economic attack is that Brussels, for example, wants to tell Hungary to abolish the cuts in utility costs, special taxes and the interest rate freeze. He also said that the government is expected to allow Ukrainian grain into the Hungarian market. Kocsis explained that when speaking about a cultural attack, he was referring to the “waves of migrants”, and added that Brussels wants the Hungarian border fence to be torn down. Another cultural attack is that they want to impose gender ideology on Hungarians, he said.

According to Kocsis, it is an attack on political sovereignty that "the Hungarian left is being funded with money from the common purse of European citizens": newspapers, internet platforms, pseudo-NGOs are on the receiving end, while they (“Brussels” -TN) are not giving money to the teachers. He did not give any specific examples, but said the national security services were looking into the matter and "the truth would come out".

For all these reasons, according to Kocsis, the stakes of next year's EP elections are no smaller, than “whether we will be able to defend our sovereignty.”

Kocsis also said that

a sovereignty protection bill would be tabled in the autumn to "make things harder for those who are selling out our country abroad in exchange for dollars". He said that they intend to ruffle the feathers of "left-wing journalists, pseudo-NGOs and “dollar politicians" who, according to him, "want to gain political power by serving the interests of American Democrat billionaires or multinational companies from Brussels, and then would pay the price for this support by abandoning the economic interests of Hungary".

He added that for the bill to be passed, both the Fundamental Law and the Criminal Code would have to be amended.