Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán left the country along with Vox boss Santiago Abascal during their January 2022 interview in Madrid. VOX SPAIN (via Portal)
The first thing Vox boss Santiago Abascal did after the May 28 regional and local elections was a trip to Budapest, where he was received by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The Hungarian ultra-nationalist leader has several open files in the EU over his attacks on the rule of law, and the European Commission has held back billions of dollars in aid for failing to take action to fight corruption. Orbán is the standard-bearer of what he himself calls “illiberal democracy” (as opposed to liberal democracy), a system that, while retaining the formality of voting rights, empties substantive freedoms until democracy remains in a snail shell. In Budapest, Abascal defended Orbán against alleged harassment by the European institutions, while they congratulated him on “excellent results” proving that “the reconquest (he wrote in Spanish) continues.”
Because of his closeness to Vladimir Putin, Orbán has distanced himself from his Polish co-religionists, is more isolated in Europe than ever, and Abascal presents himself as his best ally. In the European Parliament, the Hungarian Fidesz MEPs sit in the non-attached group, neither in Identity and Democracy – the group of Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini – nor in the ECR of the Polish Law and Justice party (PiS). the Italians Giorgia Meloni and Abascal. European Parliament elections are due in June 2024 and an eventual alliance of all ultras, diplomatic sources in Brussels warn, is threatening to lose ground to a European People’s Party that has had no reference since the departure of Germany’s Angela Merkel.
The election program that Vox published on Friday copies many of Orbán’s ideas. Among other things, she offers pregnant women to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus in order to dissuade them from having an abortion, a measure that the Ultra party describes as voluntary and that it has already tried to implement in Castilla y León, but without success the case is mandatory in Hungary. Another proposal inspired by the Hungarian prime minister is to put issues of “special political importance” to a referendum based on Article 92 of the constitution. These are consultations convened by the government to strengthen its position on controversial issues. Orbán used it to protect against the EU his opposition to the distribution of immigrants or his actions against the LGTBI collective, while Abascal wants to use it to ban pro-independence parties, among other things. The program also includes proposals that directly conflict with the positions of the European People’s Party, such as the call for a return to unanimity in decision-making in the EU or the primacy of national legislation over Community law.
The most innovative offer, however, is the tax reform that practically exempts families with four or more children from paying taxes: Those who earn less than 70,000 euros a year pay nothing; Anyone who exceeds this income limit without limitation is only taxed at 9% and can further reduce their taxes through deductions. According to Abascal, his role model is Hungary, “where families with more than three children never pay income tax for the rest of their lives.” The alternative model is Poland, where the ultra-conservative PiS government introduced a monthly payment of initially 115 euros from the second child. The difference is that the Vox model, deduction instead of payment, leaves poor large families who do not have to pay taxes from their benefits.
The program presented by the Ultra party in the elections takes up demands that Abascal left on the shelf, such as dismantling the autonomous state and replacing it with a “decentralized unitary state”, to which is added the repeal of one Range of laws ranging from abortion or euthanasia to yes-is-yes laws, democratic memory, transgender laws or climate change. Abascal himself has recognized that he would be “inflexible” in implementing his campaign promises if he had an outright majority, which all polls rule out; However, he adds that in the event of a coalition government with the PP, a possibility the polls are indeed considering, he would be happy with the joint programme, including each party’s proposals “in proportion to their results”. Speaking in Zaragoza on Saturday, he attributed the PP’s silence on its program to a “polite gesture” and acknowledged that the approaches of both parties “clash” on many issues, but stressed that depending on the outcome of the polls it will show ” what mix these programs can adopt to create an alternative”.
Sources close to Vox concede that presenting a high-stakes manifesto “raises the bar for negotiations” while leaving more scope for an eventual pact with the PP. “Among the 381 measures included in the programme, it will not be difficult to find a few that can be agreed on,” they argue. Some of Abascal’s proposals represent a toast to the sun, as they require constitutional reform, such as the abolition of autonomy, but the noise they make ignores others along the same lines, such as devolving powers to the State in health care, justice, security or education.
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The problem for the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is that Vox’s proposals are aimed at the end goal, so even if it doesn’t reach it, they pave the way: in case Vox doesn’t support the PP towards it brings to agree to abolish the right to abortion if it can make its practice unfeasible by removing it from the public health system or extending the appeal of health workers indefinitely, as it also proposes.
“Vox knows exactly where to go. The question is whether the PP knows,” comments a scholar who has studied the Ultra party. The chapter devoted to Europe contains two time bombs: the return to unanimity in decision-making, which means the EU has come to a standstill; and the primacy of the constitution and national legislation over European law, a position held by Poland and Hungary and which, if adopted by a larger country like Spain, “would mean the end of the European project,” diplomatic warn Sources in Brussels are worried about how Vox has asserted its positions in the controversy over irrigation in Doñana or bovine tuberculosis in Castilla y León. “If Abascal is Orbán’s ally, it will be difficult to explain in Europe that Feijóo is Abascal’s ally,” they judge.
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