Hungary's parliament has given its approval to a proposal to abolish the European Parliament as an elected body and replace it with a system where the national legislatures of the bloc's 27 members appoint representatives.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban's right-wing nationalist Fidesz Party proposed the move, with 130 of its lawmakers in the 234-seat house backing it on July 19. Fifty deputies in the legislature opposed the proposal, which also calls for deleting the objective of an "ever closer union," which is written into EU treaties.
Orban is expected to present the proposal to EU leaders sometime in the coming months.
Orban, who has dominated Hungarian politics for more than a decade, has been battling Brussels on a range of issues from perceived democratic and rights backsliding, to sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, to enlargement and other internal EU issues.
Last week, the European Commission said it was referring Hungary to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over alleged discrimination against LGBT people, restrictions on media freedom, and gasoline pricing that discriminates against foreign-registered vehicles.
The bloc has already made the approval of Hungary's EU recovery funds conditional on legal changes that reinforce anti-corruption measures.
