“We Have Never Seen You!”: Hungarian Opposition Leader Confronted by Angry Farmers

Péter Magyar turned up at a protest against the EU’s deal with the South American bloc Mercosur in Strasbourg on Tuesday—as good a photo op as any. But farmers, who fear an influx of cheaper imports as a result of the agreement, were not at all pleased to see him.

In Hungary, Magyar leads the opposition Tisza party. But in the European Parliament, where he sits as a member, he represents—and, importantly, votes with—the European People’s Party. That is, the party of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who signed the Mercosur deal on Saturday, despite a wave of (farmer-led) opposition. The EPP also questionably claimed earlier this month that it was backing the deal “to boost Europe’s economy.”

Farmers at the protest asked Magyar—in the words of Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet—“why he was only joining the protests now and where he had been before.” One asked the opposition leader directly:

When did you stand up for the farmers?

We have never seen you.

Magyar played the typical defence line, claiming that those who confronted him were not legit farmers but activists from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’ Fidesz party. He even went on to say that “Fidesz has once again left [farmers] behind,” while his own party “stands with” them.

Hungarian business paper Világgazdaság said this claim—that the opposition leader was faced only with political activists—was “certainly not true.” One agriculture official also told its journalists that the likes of Magyar “just went out to take pictures, and I understand that the fellow farmers outside completely distanced themselves from them.”

Responding to the ambush, Balázs Orbán, who is the PM’s political director, said:

The uncomfortable truth is that Magyar’s Tisza party did not oppose the Mercosur agreement in the European Parliament at all: its MEPs abstained, while the EPP group, led by Manfred Weber—and serving as Ursula von der Leyen’s main political stronghold—openly campaigned in support of the deal.

As a result, while Péter Magyar was speaking against Mercosur in a Facebook live stream, just a few hundred meters away Manfred Weber was holding a press conference [giving his] full political support for the agreement and for von der Leyen.

The European Parliament is voting today, January 21st, on whether to ask the European Court of Justice for its opinion on the trade agreement, which could delay it for months.