"We'll see you in court", several MEPs warned the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, this week, outraged that she has unlocked 10.2 billion euros in community aid to Hungary as a reward for her latest judicial reforms. Said and done: yesterday the European Parliament instructed the Legal Affairs Committee to begin the procedures to denounce the decision before the Court of Justice of the European Union. "The Union cannot in any way give in to blackmail, trade with its strategic interests and those of its allies and renounce values", criticizes the resolution, approved by 345 votes in favor, 104 against and 29 abstentions.
In the event that the legal services of the institution conclude that the case has a legal basis and their arguments are endorsed by the Community justice, the Eurochamber would then denounce the Commission itself for having "failed to fulfill its task as guardian of the treaties and protect the financial interests of the Union", warns the resolution, which threatens to use "any of the hypopolitical legal measures at its disposal" if the Commission delivers new funds to Budapest "without the criteria being met".
The trigger for the shock this time was the decision, adopted in December, to unfreeze part of the cohesion fund aid destined for Hungary in response to the judicial reforms that the Government of the ultra-conservative Viktor Orbán pushed forward in Parliament in May. “Hungary has fulfilled. These are the rules we have all agreed upon and we will follow them. It is what differentiates the rule of law from the arbitrary exercise of power", defended Von der Leyen during the tense parliamentary debate on Wednesday in Strasbourg, in which he recalled that there are 20 billion more euros frozen due to of the application of different defense mechanisms of the Rule of Law. The fact that the popular German left the chamber before the end to go to Switzerland and delegate her reply to a vice-president warmed the spirits of MEPs, who accuse her of giving in to try to appease Orbán.
The European Parliament disagrees with Brussels' conclusions and claims that the changes adopted by the Hungarian Parliament to guarantee judicial independence are merely cosmetic. The reforms have not been subjected to "adequate parliamentary control or public consultation" and "do not review the recent political appointments at the highest levels of the country's judicial system", says the Eurochamber, which requires the Council to fully apply the Article 7 of the EU treaty – activated at the time by MEPs, not by governments – to defend the rule of law and determine whether Hungary is violating it. The procedure could lead to the withdrawal of the right to vote in the Hungarian country, but the Council, where until recently Orbán had the firm support of Poland, which would have stopped the decision, has so far been reluctant to take this step.
"Over the course of the last decade, Hungary has become a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy", reiterate the MEPs, who denounce the Government's "systematic actions" against the rule of law. The situation of vulnerable groups such as "women, LGBTIQ people, gypsies, migrants, asylum seekers and refugees" has deteriorated considerably, without the institutions being able to protect them, denounces the resolution, which criticizes public control of public and private media. Just yesterday, Orbán's chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, reiterated that his Government would not reform any of its laws relating to homosexuals or asylum in response to pressure from Brussels to unlock funds, as this would go "against the will" of the voters.
In the resolution, MEPs "condemn" Orbán's decision to block multi-year financial aid to Ukraine at the European Council summit in December, actions "in total breach and violation of the Union's strategic interests" which "violate the principle loyal decooperation enshrined in the treaties", and they reiterate, in addition, the urgency that the extraordinary summit of February 1 is able to give the go-ahead to this financing.
It coincides that next July 1 Hungary will assume the rotating presidency of the Council of the Union, so the Parliament "wonders whether the Hungarian Government will be able to fulfill this task in a credible way" and asks the Twenty-seven to " formulate appropriate solutions to mitigate these risks as soon as possible".
