Italy’s right-wing League leader Matteo Salvini on Sunday released a text message he received from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán attending a European Union summit in Brussels in which Orbán assured him that Hungary was “on Italy’s side”.
In the text message Salvini posted on Facebook, Orbán noted that before sending the message, he had told reporters in Brussels that Hungary firmly stood by Italy.
Orbán earlier told the media that if European Union leaders failed to reach an agreement on the bloc’s next long-term budget and post-pandemic recovery package, it would be because of The Netherlands. The prime minister said The Netherlands wanted to introduce a new mechanism to monitor how European Union funds are paid out to and spent by member states. Concerning the proportion between the non-refundable grants and loans contained within the recovery package, Orbán said that Hungary supported the Italian position that money should be granted to countries that need it most urgently.
Meanwhile, Adolfo Urso, head of the Italian-Hungarian parliamentary friendship group, of Fratelli d’Italia (FdI), has said that the EU summit had shown that Orbán and the Visegrad Group countries were Italy’s best allies against The Netherlands’ “shameful arrogance”. Urso said on Facebook that “Italy and Hungary, together with Spain and Portugal, could lead an alliance of southern and central Europe, saving the EU from the northern, Dutch pirates, in the spirit of solidarity of the former founders of the European community.”
MTI
