HUNGARY : EESC'S MALOSSE PRAISES ORBAN'S "INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS".

Prime Minister Viktor Orban enjoys unparalleled political backing in the EU. His Conservative Fidesz party's two-thirds majority in Hungary's parliament enables him to implement aggressive economic reforms and to completely overhaul the nation's political landscape, including the drafting and adoption of a new constitution. His government's measures have elicited criticism from the European Commission, the Council of Europe and a number of fellow European leaders. For some, the country is in a much worse situation now than before Fidesz came to power. But others, adherents of his unorthodox anti-crisis measures, consider Orban the leader who thinks "out of the box" and who Europe should be looking for.

"I admire him for his courage to take another route," said the President of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), Henry Malosse, during his recent visit to Hungary. In Malosse's view, Orban's pragmatic approach, in stark contrast with the "Brussels technocracy's ideology," is a path worth considering that could turn the self-styled anti-Communist leader from a black sheep into a role model for the region.

The president of the EESC, the Union's assembly representing the civil society, visited the country for three days in order to receive first-hand information about the ongoing reforms and the lessons to be learnt. "The country has been ostracised by the EU's leaders during aa year and a half," he told Europolitics during his visit. "I found this very unfair."

"We are trying to shape our relationship with the EU institutions on the basis of common sense", Orban said when asked by Europolitics if Malosse's visit could be seen as a turning point in its tense relationship with Brussels. "My arguments don't belong to the mainstream, but what is not the mainstream today could be the mainstream tomorrow," he added.

Behind this fact-finding mission there was a latent endorsement by Malosse of the "innovative solutions" implemented by Orban. "Greece and Hungary were in a similar situation at the beginning of the crisis. Now it is clear who is in better shape after the reforms dictated by Brussels, and those implemented by the Hungarian government," Malosse repeated during his meetings with government officials, opposition leaders, businessmen, civil society actors, entrepreneurs and students.

However, the hypothesis behind this early endorsement appears to be easy to challenge. Greece was in a much worse situation compared to Hungary...