MEPs Petras Auštrevičius, Laima Andrikienė, Antanas Guoga, Viktor Uspaskich and Vilija Blinkevičiūtė voted for an infringement procedure against Budapest.

Valdemar Tomaševski was against such decision. Valentinas Mazuronis and Algirdas Saudargas abstained.

‘All human rights are violated there and democracy is at risk,’ said V. Blinkevičiūtė for BNS.

After an infringement procedure Hungary may lose the right to vote in EU.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been criticized for many years for electoral system matters, media freedom and independence of courts, as well as for inappropriate treatment of asylum seekers.

Budapest seeks to prove that measures against migrants and protection of sovereign rights matches the mood of national and European voters.

V. Blinkevičiūtė stated that the Prime Minister of Hungary ‘lives in a distorted reality.’

‘He does not understand that EU family is a family based on human rights, and it is not possible here to do anything like ‘I do what I want,’ said the politician.

‘It looks like they want to get money from social funds, but they do not want to follow common rules at all,’ she added.

V. Tomasevski claimed that he voted against the EU’s actions on Hungary, because ‘today’s voting distorted the founding goals, direction and aspirations of EU.’

‘Europe gone far from its Christian roots and may simply vanish, because it is being destroyed from the inside. Left-wing and liberal forces do this, and just today we saw their attempt to humiliate Hungary,’ said the MEP.

Tomaševski emphasized that EU solves such issues, although ‘the current elite is detached from people’s lives, the EU economy is growing poorly, there is high youth unemployment.’

‘Hungary has its backbone and knows that EU is an union of nations, not just one country detached from reality,’ said V. Tomaševski.

The tensions between Hungary and EU increased significantly when Budapest, in the midst of a migration crisis in 2015, refused to accept asylum seekers under a community-enhanced scheme.