Budapest/Strasbourg, November 25 (TASR) – We continue to share many of the concerns expressed by the European Parliament in its proposal from September 2018, on the basis of which legal proceedings were initiated against Hungary under Article Seven of the EU Treaty. According to the MTI agency, European Commissioner for Justice, Democracy and the Rule of Law, Michael McGrath, said this on Monday in Strasbourg during the EP’s plenary debate on the violation of basic EU values in Hungary. The correspondent of TASR in Budapest informs about it.
The Commissioner recalled that the European Commission regularly and consistently assesses the situation in the area of the rule of law in Hungary and continues to identify serious deficiencies in its annual reports. He stressed that the European Council had so far held nine hearings under the Article Seven procedure, with “no substantial progress” on most issues.
McGrath highlighted that the Commission had suspended around €18 billion of funding under several mechanisms, including the recovery fund and budgetary conditionality, of which €1 billion had already been lost.
The Dutch MEP for the Greens, Tineke Striková, said in the debate that seven years after the start of the Article Seven procedure, violations of EU values in Hungary have worsened. Striková is responsible for the report on Hungary and has criticized the weakening of the independence of the judiciary, the persistent state of the rule of law, widespread corruption, the suppression of media pluralism, the stifling of civil society organizations and the curtailment of LGBTQI rights.
According to her, Hungary has become “an electoral autocracy, a hybrid regime.” Striková called on the EC and the Council to take fundamental steps – even by freezing one hundred percent of EU funds – to stop the further deterioration of the rule of law.
MEP for the Democratic Coalition Klára Dobrevová emphasized in her speech that the two-thirds power of the government has become “total power” in Hungary, while control mechanisms have disappeared. The market economy was replaced by “political mafia and corruption”.
MEP for Fidesz Kinga Gálov said that a “political witch hunt” has been going on against Hungary for 15 years with increasingly absurd accusations. According to her, the criticism of Budapest stems from the claims of “activist non-governmental organizations” that fulfill foreign orders. She said that Hungary is under attack because it protects national interests, rejects illegal migration, gender ideology and the accelerated entry of Ukraine into the EU.
(TASR reporter Ladislav Vallach) Wed
