The Latest: EU Parliament bloc suspends Hungary's Fidesz
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — The Latest on the dispute between the European Parliament’s center-right EPP alliance and its Hungary’s Fidesz party (all times local):
7:10 p.m.
Manfred Weber, leader of center-right EPP alliance in European Parliament, says Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has been suspended from the grouping.
After daylong discussions among members in the European Parliament’s biggest alliance, Weber said Fidesz “can no longer propose candidates for posts” in the group and said they cannot vote on issues or join major group meetings.
“It was a very hard discussion,” said Weber, adding that Orban was at the meeting in person.
“The message was crystal clear,” he said “The EPP was very clear and united … that the suspension is needed.”
An evaluation commission led by former EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy will now follow developments within the Fidesz party.
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12:40 p.m.
A senior lawmaker from Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party says Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party may be suspended from the main center-right bloc in the European Parliament.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s authoritarian style and anti-European Union, anti-migration policies have long put him at odds with many members of the European People’s Party, whose delegates are meeting Wednesday to debate possible disciplinary measures against Fidesz.
Inge Graessle, an EU parliament lawmaker from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, told Germany’s SWR2 radio that she believes the EPP will “temporarily suspend his membership today — that is the step before expulsion — and then he can choose how he wants to continue.”
Graessle said Orban, who had led Fidesz practically unchallenged since the early 1990s, “has to show credibly that he will change.”
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