What is Nicola Beer's policy on Viktor Orbán?
Why did not she recently say anything about the situation in Hungary during her Stuttgart Epiphany?
What contacts does the FDP general secretary have for Orbán Fidesz party?
Such and other questions will be asked in the FDP before the party conference next Sunday. Because that's where Beer wants to be voted top candidate for the European elections.
"As the designated top candidate, Ms. Beer must clearly take a stand against Orbán and his politics," demands the former FDP Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. "It's about our values, and that's why the top candidate, who is supposed to shape the European election campaign of the Liberals in public, must reject the attacks of the Hungarian Prime Minister - with passion and conviction."
Others say only behind the scenes: "That's a problem," says one. "Nicola Beer has to explain herself," demands another.
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Viktor Orban
FDP leader Christian Lindner defended the designated top candidate. "Politically Nicola Beer has our full confidence," he told Handelsblatt. The FDP criticizes the government Orbán and the policy of the Fidesz party hard, the party leader. "If old private ties persist, the Hungarians must be able to endure a lot."
Lindner thus alluded to the friendship between Beer and the former Orbán minister Zoltán Balog, about which SPIEGEL had reported. Beer knows the studied pastor about her husband Jürgen Illing. Last fall, the couple even got married from Balog in Budapest.
Beers husband recommended the ex-minister FDP politicians as interlocutors. Before the vote in the European Parliament last September on the initiation of proceedings against Hungary for violations of the rule of law, Illing wrote to European MEP Wolf Klinz that Balog was "a close friend for whose political stance on democracy, the rule of law, protection of minorities, etc. I mean Hand does not have to put in the fire ". Balog is an independent man, wrote Illing. "Actually, he belongs to us :-)".
What Illing did not mention: Balog served Orbán until May last year as Minister of Health and Science. Under Balog's leadership, the law was passed that attacked the Central European University (CEU) of US investor George Soros and severely curtailed teaching in Hungary.
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Orbán, Balog
It should not take the FDP Secretary General for the activities of her husband in clan attachment, it is said from the party leadership. And silence does not mean consent.
But after SPIEGEL research Beer has their friend Balog behind closed doors in protection and reduced the conflict around the Soros University.
On June 14, 2018, Beer gave a "keynote speech" at the event organized by the German-Hungarian Society at the Hungarian Embassy in Berlin on the subject of "Hungary's New Government - Responsibility for Europe". According to the manuscript of her speech - it was subsequently sent to the participants - Beer downplayed the conflict around Soros University there. She knows Balog "well enough to have even the slightest doubt about his commitment to the freedom of science."
One could ask the question of whether it makes sense "to focus on debates on more administrative issues such as the recognition of the CEU," Beer said. That had to be "solved by the administrations".
Thus, the FDP General Secretary represented exactly the line of defense of the Orbán government to the European Commission: It was not about fundamental violations of the rule of law, but about disagreements in specific issues.
If it does not work in Hungary, as it should work in the EU, you can talk directly with each other, added Beer, according to the manuscript. "But please do not declare in public."
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Beers party friend Alexander Graf Lambsdorff sees this obviously different. He reacted to the adoption of the law in April 2017 with a public statement: The bill on restricting the freedom of science shows once again that Hungary is getting further and further away from the values of a liberal democracy, wrote the then MEP in a press release.
And further: "The Federal Government should finally support the initiation of a rule of law procedure against Hungary," said Lambsdorff. "If she does not, she undermines the credibility of the EU as an advocate of democracy and the rule of law."
Beer himself took a stand on Tuesday for discussion about her person. The allegations are "false and baseless," said the FDP politician of the "spark" media group: "I have no sympathy for the 'illiberal democracy' of Viktor Orbán."
On Sunday will show whether the delegates of the congress are satisfied with it.