Hungary's ruling Fidesz led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban has quit the centre-right European People's Party, a minister said Thursday, two weeks after leaving its grouping in the European parliament. "It is time to say goodbye," Katalin Novak said in a tweet accompanied by a letter signed by Fidesz leaders. "I am informing the presidency of the European People's Party that Fidesz no longer wishes to maintain its membership and is therefore leaving it," the letter said. The move marks Fidesz's definitive break with the EPP, which brings together Europe's main centre-right parties and is the biggest single voting bloc in the European Parliament. It is the party of both Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel. Fidesz's decision to quit the parliament grouping earlier this month came immediately after the conservative bloc voted for a rules change that opened the way for it to suspend Orban's party over its alleged repeated democratic backsliding. The decisions follow years of rancour between EPP parties over whether to kick Fidesz out of the parliamentary grouping or keep its MEPs on board to avoid them siding with eurosceptic populists. Orban has called for the creation of a new European right-wing force for "our type of people". He has said he was in talks with "the Poles," referring to Poland's governing right-wing PiS party, as well as Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni, leaders of two stridently anti-immigration and eurosceptic Italian parties. pmu-anb/mjs/txw