Der Spiegel claims Fidesz will not be excluded from the EPP in early February

HUNGARY - In Brief 25 Jan 2020 by Istvan Racz

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The German newspaper claims to have information that the European People's Party's president, Donald Tusk has made clear in his recent telephone conversations that at present, the majority to support the exclusion of Fidesz from the EPP is missing, and so Fidesz will not be expelled from the party family at the EPP Political Assembly's next meeting on February 3-4. The proposal Mr. Tusk is likely to make is to extend the suspension of Fidesz' membership rights until the latter provides clearcut evidence that it has changed its course regarding its domestic political conduct.'Missing majority' may easily mean that the two German parties, CDU and CSU, which are the leading forces in the EPP are against making such a step, just as top figures from both parties recently confirmed in public talk. This means that in a special example of German 'Realpolitik', they make a difference between condemning Fidesz for its domestic political conduct (as they did recently in the European Parliament) and pushing Fidesz through the dividing line between the EPP and its opposition within the EP. Apparently, they want to maintain some leverage on Fidesz and to prevent it from going anywhere else.Should this be the actual situation, then the EPP meeting on the week after next should prove to be a non-event from the market's point of view.