MEPs pass resolution condemning Hungary

Commentators sharply disagree on the resolution passed by the European Parliament, questioning the suitability of Hungary to take over the rotating presidency of the European Council one year from now.

EU lawmakers doubled down on their criticism of Hungary on Thursday, backing a motion that threatens to use blocking tactics to disrupt Hungary’s EU presidency next year. The resolution, which accuses the Fidesz government of ‘systemic corruption’, also questions how Hungary will be able to credibly fulfil this task in 2024, ‘given its non-compliance with EU law and … values, as well as the principle of sincere cooperation’.

On KlubRadio, Dániel Hegedűs, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund doesn’t believe that Hungary’s rotating presidency will be postponed by the European Council, as desired by the European Parliament. Most member countries, he explains, share the MEPS’s concerns but are reticent to change the rules whereby member countries perform the rotating presidency on an equal basis. Nevertheless, Hegedűs doesn’t think that the EP resolution will remain without consequences. Relentless pressure by the European Parliament, he suggests, has resulted in more resolute action by the European Commission over what they perceive as serious rule-of-law problems in Hungary.

In an angry column in Magyar Nemzet, László Szentesi Zöldi ascribes the EP resolution to US influence. He suggests that the US administration wants to keep allies in line, over ‘western interests in their bilateral relations; propagating homosexuality and other sexual disorders as well as accepting mass immigration’. Hungary, he believes, is declared guilty because it has failed to fulfil those conditions. As he sees it, the ‘shopwindow Left and the shopwindow Right’ in Brussels are by now united in the service of ‘liberal global hegemony’. The conclusion he suggests his readers to draw from Brussel’s ‘guilty verdict’ is that Hungarians can only count on themselves.

Tags: European Union, rule of law