We know the price of appeasement. That’s why we must stand up to Viktor Orbán | Timothy Garton Ash

Merkel and her centre-right allies must compel Hungary’s leader to change course or freeze him out

This appeasement has to stop. If Hungary’s anti-liberal, nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, persists in his attempts to close down the country’s best and most independent university, and continues to erode liberal democracy in many other ways, then the EU’s powerful grouping of centre-right parties must expel Orbán’s party from its ranks.

Otherwise, the constant declarations of fidelity to certain universal values from the European People’s party (EPP) grouping will be worth less than the paper they’re written on. And the political family of German chancellor Angela Merkel, Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy, European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and European council president Donald Tusk, to name but a few, will look like a gaggle of temporising appeasers.

Related: Hungary has been shamed by Viktor Orbán’s government | George Szirtes

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