Budapest, 18 Jan 2023 (Lusa) – Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán today mocked MEPs allegedly involved in corruption cases in the European Parliament (EP), saying there are so many that they could form a football team “in prison”.
“Soon there will be enough corrupt MEPs behind bars with the possibility of forming their own football team in prison. Who knows? They could even qualify for the 2024 European Championship,” Orbán wrote on the social network Twitter.
The nationalist and sovereigntist prime minister, known to be very critical of the EP, reacted in this way to the European Parliament’s announcement that it had begun procedures to strip two MEPs of their parliamentary immunity.
The EP started proceedings today for their alleged involvement in the corruption scandal linked to Qatar and Morocco and, in parallel, for two other MEPs accused of fraud for illegally using parliamentary funds to pay their advisers.
Orbán again used the phrase “drain the swamp” which he had used in mid-December in connection with the same scandal and which was a well-known motto of former US President Donald Trump.
The Hungarian executive and pro-government ‘media’ have used the corruption scandal to delegitimise the EP’s criticism of Budapest.
The European Commission has frozen the sending of cohesion funds to Hungary valued at €22 billion due to alleged acts of corruption is the authoritarian drift of the central European country, led by Orbán since 2010 after he first held the post of prime minister between 1998 and 2020.
