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| - Hungary's ruling Fidesz party led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban quit the conservative European People's Party (EPP) European Parliament grouping on Wednesday, after a dispute that had roiled the EPP for years. The decision to quit came immediately after the conservative bloc voted for a rules change that opened the way for it to suspend Fidesz from their ranks over its alleged repeated democratic backsliding. The EPP backed by 148 members to 28 a measure that would allow them in the future to vote to suspend or dismiss an entire national party delegation. "I hereby inform you that Fidesz MEPs resign their membership in the EPP group," Orban said in a letter to EPP group leader Manfred Weber, posted on Twitter by Fidesz vice-president and government minister Katalin Novak. Orban accused the EPP of "trying to mute and disable our democratically elected MEPs" and called the vote "a hostile move against Fidesz and our voters", as well as "anti-democratic, unjust and unacceptable". The EPP, which brings together Europe's main centre-right parties, is the biggest single voting bloc in the European Parliament and the party of both Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel. It had already suspended Fidesz from the party itself in 2019 because of a government poster campaign accusing former European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and liberal US billionaire George Soros -- Orban's bete noire -- of plotting to flood Europe with migrants. The vote on changing the parliamentary grouping suspension rules came after the EPP sanctioned Fidesz group leader Tamas Deutsch for comparing remarks by Weber to the slogans of the Gestapo and Hungary's communist-era secret police. The departure of the 12 Fidesz MEPS book-ends years of rancour between EPP parties over whether to kick the party out from the parliamentary grouping or keep its MEPs on board to avoid them siding with eurosceptic populists. The news was "a great relief and a historic day for the EPP and Europe," said Finnish MEP Petri Sarvamaa, who negotiated on behalf of the European Parliament last year over a rule-of-law deal that would sanction EU countries that flout democratic standards. "Virtually all of the group, including the largest parties, have lost their last faith in the authoritarian Orban," Sarvamaa said in a statement. But Geoffroy Didier, a French MEP with the EPP member party Les Republicains, said that Fidesz leaving "saddens" his party. "A political family must be able to support different sensibilities and internal debates without this turning into a tragedy. A departure is always a defeat," he said in a statement. An EPP source however told AFP that Wednesday's decision "is not the end of the story as long as Fidesz remains part of the EPP family". That will be "decided in Berlin" where Orban is protected by the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said a source. But the departure from the grouping immediately fuelled speculation about a possible new alliance of Fidesz in the European Parliament. "Orban is welcome with us!" said Jorg Meuthen, a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). "The most realistic option for Fidesz now is to join the eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, as they are on close terms with the Polish ruling PiS or Italy's Fratelli d'Italia," Budapest-based analyst Patrik Szicherle told AFP. "It is also closer to the political centre than the far-right Identity and Democracy group with more ruling parties in its ranks, so is still more acceptable to mainstream forces on the European level," he said. Hungarian opposition parties portrayed the decision by Fidesz as a defeat for Orban. "It can be spun, as in the kindergarten, that 'we were not kicked out, we ourselves stepped out' but the reality is the same. They lost," said Ferenc Gyurcsany, leader of the leftist DK, Hungary's largest opposition party. pmu/pma
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