Fidesz MEP Lívia Járóka is the sole Hungarian candidate for Vice-President of the European Parliament, having garnered the support of well over the required number of representatives, Fidesz’s EP group said in a statement on Tuesday. Járóka has served as Vice-President of the EP since 2017, as the first representative of Roma origin to do so. She has played an active role in the representation of Roma at EU level, and promoted the support of Roma cultural heritage and talent support, the statement said. Under her tenure as Vice-President, the EU held commemorations of the Roma victims of the Holocaust for the first time, and has started flying the Roma flag on its building. As Vice-President, she chaired the audit panel and was responsible for the access of documents during her previous terms, the statement said.
In the statement, Járóka said that the representation of the most vulnerable citizens and of Hungarian interests was “now more important than ever, as the past two and a half years have shown”. “I am convinced that we can only overcome the problems of the recent past by involving those who are the most vulnerable. I also see strengthening the democratic European right as an important task,” she said. “The coronavirus pandemic has deepened the divides the European Union has been striving to eliminate since its inception,” Járóka said. “As a Vice-President of the European Parliament, I worked to represent the 10-million-strong Roma population in Europe in the past year, as well as Hungarian interests, at the highest possible level, and I am asking to be given the same confidence for the next two and a half years,” she said. The EP was electing a new President and 14 Vice-Presidents for the second half of its 2019-2024 term during the day. Its previous President, David Sassoli, passed away on Jan. 11.
Tamás Deutsch, the leader of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz’s EP group, hailed Járóka’s nomination as a success achieved despite the fact that the group stands alone with being a member of any political family within the European Parliament after stepping out of the EPP in March 2021. Deutsch noted that Járóka had received a much larger number of votes than required in support of her nomination for the post of an EP Vice President. “With the nomination of Járóka, our aim, together with the MEPs supporting her, is to have the strongest possible representation of the political right in the EP’s leadership,” Deutsch told reporters in Strasbourg. “With the skills, aptitude and knowledge Lívia Járóka has she will contribute to having a representation of the Roma community in the sphere of EU politics,” Deutsch said.
Commenting on the election of Roberta Metsola as the European Parliament’s new president, Deutsch said that Fidesz MEPs supported her, a member of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).
“We have placed our trust in Roberta Metsola in advance. We have known her to be a correct politician, one who supported us in important issues while in other issues she was an advocate of policies of an open society supporting sanctions against Hungary and Poland. So there were differences in that regard which probably will continue to exist during her tenure as EP President,” said Deutsch.
The Fidesz group said in a statement on Tuesday evening that Járóka withdrew from running as a candidate for an EP Vice-President in the second round of the vote in favour of Roberts Zile, the candidate of the EP’s European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR). “Fidesz’s MEPs support the candidate of the ECR in order to have a representative of the European democratic right in the European Parliament’s governing body,” they said.