Péter Magyar to take up seat in EP, promises to donate half of salary to charity

Péter Magyar will take up his seat in the European Parliament, he announced on Tuesday evening, when checking in from Brussels. He also said that if his work in the EP should come at the expense of building the party and the TISZA community, he would resign his seat immediately. In six months' time, he intends to put it up for a vote again whether he should stay in the EP or not.

Magyar also said that they have a long day behind them, that the EPP meeting had just ended and that the Tisza received 97% support. He described it as "an important day for Hungary".

He stressed that although he had previously said he would not sit in the European Parliament, the situation had changed. Magyar said he had spent the last three months "taking back our country step by step". He stressed that he hoped that no one would deny that he would continue to work on this and that his decision to take up his mandate was made with this in mind. He added that when he said he would not take his seat in the EP, he himself had not expected Tisza to achieve such success, so taking up his seat after all was not a lie, but an adaptation to the circumstances.

He will donate half of his salary

Magyar also added that this mandate is not for five years, as he wants to see how much time and work being an MEP will require. The politician hopes that this will contribute to the Tisza Party's victory at the next parliamentary elections. Referring to the vote he held on Monday about whether he should take up his seat, Magyar said that from what he had heard, "Fidesz had given an order to vote no" to the question.

Magyar said that if he did not take up the mandate, he would still have to go abroad a lot, but that this way he could do much of this work within the EP, where "of course nobody is pro-war". He talked a lot about Fidesz calling the EPP and its politicians pro-war, but he said this was not true at all. He also said that there used to be a place for Fidesz in the EPP, but now they no longer want to include them anywhere. "Didn't that bother you before?", was Magyar's message to KDNP (Fidesz’ coalition partner) MEP György Hölvényi, who announced he would be leaving the EPP now that he had joined it. Magyar said it was strange that KDNP didn't mind being in the EPP until now.

Speaking about their goals, Magyar said that they would not accept everything from the EPP without criticism, including:

• they will not support sending troops or weapons to Ukraine;
• they will support humanitarian aid to Ukraine;
• and they will for sure keep the fence along Hungary's southern border.

Magyar added that he will donate half of his MEP salary (€4,000) to charity. He plans to use it mainly to support families in need, but will call a vote in July on who should receive the payment from his first salary. He called on other MEPs, including Tamás Deutsch (FIDESZ), to also donate at least half their salaries. Finally, he said he understands that people are critical, but he intends to show them that "doing this well is possible". Especially, he added, since he would not be "spending his time playing tennis and going to clubs" but "will be working".

The government's pockets

“No one should think that for the next two years, my task will be to travel the country”

– Magyar said, adding that he naturally plans to do that too, so that in the end "Orbán and Gyurcsány wouldn't be the only ones to vote for, but there would be another option as well".

"The one-man-show is now over", it is now time for teamwork, he said. Responding to questions, he said he would not be moving to Brussels and planned to commute, because he had "seen the bad examples and had taken them into account".

Magyar also said that the number of Tisza Party's supporters is currently at 14,000 – and the community's opinion will also count when it comes to electing candidates for parliament, he added. He also said that Hungarian government politicians should be paying the HUF 80 billion EU fine imposed on Hungary out of their own pockets.

On Tuesday, the Tisza MEPs were accepted into the parliamentary group of the European People's Party, with the group's leader Manfred Weber backing their inclusion following a visit to Budapest last Friday.

If Magyar is in, KDNP is out

Party President Zsolt Semjén and MEP György Hölvényi informed the Hungarian state news agency MTI on Tuesday that the Christian Democratic People's Party (KDNP) will be leaving the European People's Party (EPP) and its parliamentary group now that Péter Magyar has been accepted into the EPP.

"As a result of an identity-losing shift to the left, this EPP is no longer the Christian Democratic party its founders created it to be. The Christian Democratic voices within the EPP have been getting quieter and quieter in recent times, which required increasingly difficult compromises. The EPP's doctrine of war is contrary to the commitment to peace upon which the European Union itself was originally founded back in the day" wrote Semjén and Hölvényi, and added that according to them the EPP and Péter Magyar "are each other's moral evaluation".

"KDNP will continue to represent the interests of Hungarians and the values of Christian democracy in Hungary and in the European Union, just as it has done for the past 80 years. György Hölvényi will continue his fight for the persecuted Christians, using the opportunities offered by his new mandate," the statement said.