Hungary's Orban goads EU parliament conservative group

• Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban blasted colleagues in the European Parliament's centre-right EPP grouping on Thursday.
• The EPP is shrinking, losing influence, losing positions, losing seats and getting weaker.
• The internal report is due within weeks, but Orban said he hadn't seen it and didn't know if it even exists.

BUDAPEST: Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban blasted colleagues in the European Parliament's centre-right EPP grouping on Thursday amid speculation that his ruling Fidesz party is preparing to leave the group.

"The EPP is shrinking, losing influence, losing positions, losing seats and getting weaker," Orban said at a rare news conference in Budapest.

"The direction is bad, we are getting more liberal, socialist, leftist and centrist, we don't defend and preserve our original values," the hardline right-winger said.

The conservative EPP suspended Fidesz in March because of the government's poster campaign accusing former European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and liberal US billionaire George Soros -- Orban's bete noire -- of plotting to flood Europe with migrants.

After the suspension the EPP sent a delegation to produce an internal report assessing the future membership of Fidesz, a move resented by Orban who said the party will make its own decision on its future.

The internal report is due within weeks, but Orban said he hadn't seen it and didn't know if it even exists.

"If (the EPP) cannot change course we will need a new European initiative which is a new one, a Christian democratic one," Orban said.

"We will initiate something new in European politics, to balance (French President Emmanuel) Macron and his new political movement, we need something... on the right," he said.

Speculation has grown that Orban will take Fidesz into the European Conservatives and Reformists group led by Polish allies the Law and Justice party (PiS), whose leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski he visited in Warsaw Tuesday.

Orban said he will also meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, and EPP head Donald Tusk before reaching his own decision on Fidesz's future.

Tusk, who made an impassioned speech against populists and autocrats before he was formally elected EPP president in November, said after the vote that he also planned to come to a view on Fidesz this month.

The EPP brings together Europe's main centre-right parties.

After European Parliament elections last May it remained the largest group in the assembly but is under increasing pressure from far-right, liberal and green rivals, who all made gains last year.

The temporary suspension of Fidesz has split the grouping, with concerns from some that Orban will team up with right-wingers such as Italy's far-right opposition leader Matteo Salvini.

In a wide-ranging press conference lasting several hours Orban also called UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson "one of the bravest politicians" for defeating powerful political opponents and "biased media".

"I believe a generous and strategic cooperation is needed with the British in the coming period when they are no longer members of the EU," he said, adding that post-Brexit UK will likely be a "success story".

Orban, who was also pressed by reporters for curbing press freedoms, repeated regular claims that hostile opposition media publish fake news.

Several media organs critical of the government reported that they were refused access to Thursday's press conference.