– Mr President, European democracy may be dying. This is not an overdramatic sentence that I’m using to get your attention: it is exactly what is happening because of the resistible rise of one man – the Prime Minister of Hungary. Not only has he created a quasi-autocracy on the soil of the European Union, not only has he eroded civil liberties and now fundamental rights for his own people and set a frightening example, not only has he put a foot in the middle of the system and become the voice of the Kremlin around the table, but over the last few years he has been playing you: blackmailing every Member State more and more, and in a systematic way. The EU has made this politician stronger. The Commission gave him the money to capture power and install his oligarchy, and the Council empowered him by accepting to give him leverage and set the rules. At the end of your presidency, Belgians, you will be giving this man the keys of the House. This will pave the way for him to set the agenda, say whatever he wants about Russia and Ukraine and represent the EU in our name. It is inconceivable. But the leaders of Europe have decided to not do anything about it. It is time to take the game out of his hands. Belgian Presidency, you need to put back the recommendations on the table. You have already started working on this. You can find the needed qualified majority. How is it possible that today we are still not having enough Member States around the table who are courageous enough to vote on a simple recommendation? You need to prepare for the future, and that means Article 7.2. It is time to seriously think about withdrawing the voting rights of Viktor Orbán. But most of all, today, you urgently need to find a way to not give the presidency of the EU to a quasi-autocrat. (The speaker declined to take a blue-card question from Edina Tóth)