European Police College in Budapest? Not likely at the moment

While Fidesz was trying to discredit its political opponents in a tiny electoral district of a small town in Hungary, another struggle was taking place in Strasbourg over Hungary’s right to be the new site of the European Police College or CEPOL. Most likely few people have ever heard of the institution, which is currently situated in Bramshill in the United Kingdom. The UK a few months ago decided not to continue to host the college, and thus the European Commission and the Union’s other institutions had to come up with another location in one of the member countries. While they were at it, the Commission made the recommendation that CEPOL and Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency with its headquarters in The Hague, should be merged. Europol has a big, modern building, and combining the two institutions would be more cost effective. It seems that many people in the European Parliament and elsewhere in other European institutions are not too keen on the idea of the merger, believing that the college should be a professional training ground and fearing that it might be politicized by this fusion.

European Police College, Bramshill, United Kingdom

And now enters Lithuania, whose prime minister and right-wing political leadership have a soft spot for Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. In December 2012, for example, when the Hungarian government was under considerable pressure from Brussels because of its less than democratic tendencies, the Lithuanian parliament issued a proclamation “defending” Hungary. The Hungarians were naturally most grateful and thanked the Lithuanian people and their politicians for their brave act.

What does Lithuania have to do with the fate of CEPOL? A lot. Lithuania currently holds the presidency of the European Union. You may recall that when Hungary had the post for six months in 2011 the ministerial councils of the member states held their regular meetings in Gödöllő in the former summer palace of the Hungarian royal couple. It is Vilnius that now chairs these meetings, and on October 7 when the council of the ministers of the interior met they agreed to the Lithuanian proposal that the new headquarters of CEPOL should be in Budapest.

It turned out that seven countries had submitted proposals, but Hungary was the only country from the relative newcomers. And there is an attempt in the European Union to distribute European institutions in such a manner that eventually there would be no great differences between the long-time members and the newcomers.

For a while the Hungarian government felt pretty certain that the deal was sealed. CEPOL will be in Hungary from 2014 on. But then came all sorts of unforeseen complications, the least of which, as it turned out, was Rui Tavares’s objection to the location as long as the Hungarian government leaves the European Parliament’s report on the country’s democratic inefficiencies unanswered. In Hungary an awful lot of time and energy was wasted on Tavares’s objection. On October 14, Máté Kocsis in parliament called attention to the “communist” Comrade Tavares’s machinations in the hope of preventing CEPOL headquarters from being located in Budapest. And while he was at it, he accused the Hungarian socialist members of the European parliament of treasonous behavior because he “suspected” that they were the real instigators. Of course, that was followed by some tit for tat from MSZP, which decided to sue Kocsis.

All that was just a lot of useless noise because two days later MTI reported that “nobody stood by Tavares” at the hearings of Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), one of the standing committees of the European Parliament. The report also added that even Kinga Göncz, one of the MSZP members of parliament, argued for the Budapest location. Magyar Nemzet was graphic. Their article, based on the MTI report, announced that “Tavares’s spectacular failure was something else!” But the problem with all this boasting about the great Hungarian victory at the hearing is that the issue didn’t hinge on Tavares’s objections. The situation is much more serious than that.

If one has the patience to listen to the forty-minute video of the hearing, it becomes clear that the procedure Lithuania adopted is most likely flawed. Moreover, despite what Kinga Gál (Fidesz) claimed at the hearing, the European Parliament has veto power over the decision. So does the European Commission. And it is clear that both the representatives of the Commission and the parliamentary rapporteur of the European Parliament are against moving CEPOL to Budapest.

The Commission still prefers the merger of CEPOL and Europol in The Hague, and the parliamentary rapporteur, the Spanish Agustin Diaz de Mera Garcia Consuegra, a member of the European People’s Party, expressed his opinion that the procedure adopted by Lithuania is unconstitutional and therefore most likely void. The European Parliament was not consulted as it should have been. Lithuania misread the constitution or misconstrued it  The whole affair is “pathetic,” he announced.

Another EPP member, the French Veronique Mathieu Houillon, who will be the rapporteur of the question, suggested taking a look at all seven applications which up till now the European parliamentary members didn’t have an opportunity to review. The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for November 26 when perhaps a decision will be made.

So, that is the true story of the hearing of LIBE on Thursday. No great victory, at best a setback. Moreover, it is a distinct possibility that Budapest, after all, will not get CEPOL because neither the European Commission nor the representatives of the European Parliament are keen on the Budapest location. Also, keep in mind that both people who suggested reviewing the whole procedure are members of the conservative European People’s Party. Hungary will be the site of CEPOL only if both the Commission and the Parliament endorse its bid. From the tone of the discussion I wouldn’t be too optimistic if I were Viktor Orbán.

I also wonder how much damage Lithuania did to its own reputation and to the Hungarian cause in bypassing EU rules to support its ideological friend, Orbán’s Hungary. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that Hungary asked Lithuania’s help in mending its relations with Armenia. It seems that the Lithuanians were ready to assist, but their efforts ended in a large embarrassment for both Lithuania and Hungary. There may also have been close cooperation between the two countries in the case of CEPOL’s headquarters. Given the tone of the hearings, such cooperation (if it existed) wasn’t a good idea.

Linguistic misunderstandings in a Hungarian context

On a Sunday in the middle of the summer not much is going on, and therefore I’m free to move away from everyday politics and venture into something I find equally exciting. Some history and some linguistics. Well, it is not very high level linguistics I’m talking about but rather the difficulties of understanding the true meanings of words, especially in a foreign language.

By way of background I should mention that Rui Tavares is the latest target of the Orbán government and its satellite media. He is right up there near Ferenc Gyurcsány and Gordon Bajnai. I happen to think that he’s in pretty good company since I view both Gyurcsány and Bajnai as among the best Hungarian politics has to offer today. Ignorance and bias are the charges most frequently leveled against Tavares. A reporter for HírTV thought that he could unequivocally prove in a single stroke that Tavares is both ignorant and biased.

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Breughel

Magyar Nemzet triumphantly announced that, interestingly enough, “the discriminatory” Dutch constitution doesn’t seem to bother Rui Tavares even as he tries to find fault with the Hungarian Basic Laws. It turned out that this information about the allegedly faulty Dutch constitution came from a HírTV  reporter. Armed with this “damaging” passage, the reporter went off to Brussels to confront Rui Tavares, who didn’t have a ready “yes or no” answer about the passage in question. The reporter was convinced that he now had proof positive that Tavares, in his zeal to condemn the Hungarian constitution, had turned a blind eye to the discriminatory Dutch constitution. Both Magyar Nemzet and HírTV were elated.

There was one very serious problem with this discovery. Our reporter’s English left something to be desired. The sentence in question in the Dutch constitution reads in English translation: “The right of every Dutch national to a free choice of work shall be recognized.” The Hungarian reporter thought that the word “national” here referred to “those of Dutch nationality” and after all, he argued, there are citizens of the Netherlands who are not of Dutch extraction. But “national” as a noun in English means “citizen” or “subject.”

By the way, the title of  this particular episode of  his TV show “Célpont” was “Tavaris és Tavares,” a stupid pun on “tovarish” or “comrade” in Russian. I don’t think that HírTV ever corrected the false statements about the Dutch constitution. Those who want to take the trouble to watch this episode will have a fair idea of the quality and tone of HírTV.

Well, this was an error committed by a Hungarian interpreting the meaning of a non-Hungarian word. But it can happen the other way around as well. Here is a good example from 1989.

This time we have to go back to the career of Zoltán Bíró, the anti-Semitic literary historian who was just named to head a new research institute that is supposed to rewrite the history of regime change in Hungary. A few days ago I mentioned him and dwelt briefly on his political career. At this point I quoted Zoltán Ripp who wrote an excellent book on the change of regime covering the years between 1987 and 1990. In it he mentions that Bïró had a significant role to play in reviving the old cleavage and enmity between the “népi-nemzeti” and “urbanista” traditions. As I’ve often said, rendering “népi-nemzeti” into English is well-nigh impossible. In any case, the New York Times article which I couldn’t find translated these two troublesome words as “populist-nationalist.” And with it came a huge misunderstanding.

János Avar, the well-known journalist and an expert on U.S. politics and history, e-mailed me right after the appearance of my post on Bíró. He called my attention to an article he wrote on this very subject in 2007. He did find The New York Times article, but because Bíró and others at the time gave the date as September 28 I never suspected that the article in question actually appeared only on October 25. Avar had more patience and was more thorough than yours truly.

The American reporter for the NYT in Budapest at the time gave a fair description of the by-now famous gathering in Lakitelek in September 1987 and mentioned that those who gathered there were “népiesek” and “nemzetiek,” which he rendered as “populists and nationalists.” The Hungarians on the spot had to be the ones who tried to explain to the American the correct meaning of these words.  According to Avar, “népies” is a mirror translation of the German “völkisch” which recently has taken on a fairly sinister meaning. My favorite German on-line dictionary says that “völkisch” means nationalist, nationalistic, ethnic, racist, voelkisch. However, it is certainly not “populist,” which we use to mean appealing to the interests or prejudices of ordinary people.

The völkisch/narodnik/népies Hungarians were up in arms and immediately suspected that the article was the result of some kind of Jewish conspiracy of the urbanists who were trying to blacken their names in the West. They suspected that the article was not really written by the reporter for The New York Times but was “dictated” by one of the Jewish members of the Democratic Opposition. They were convinced that the words “populist” and “nationalist” were code words for anti-Semites.

As János Avar rightly points out in his 2007 article,  neither “Jewish” nor “anti-Semitism” was, as in Hungary, a taboo word in the United States. If the reporter had been told that there was an anti-Semitic tinge to the gathering, he would not have hesitated to say so.

Don’t think that this was just a fleeting episode that is not worth bothering about today. Bíró as well as other right-wing and anti-Semitic nationalists continue to bring up the allegedly unpatriotic and antagonistic behavior of the Democratic Opposition toward themselves, the true patriots. In their eyes the urbanists were not true Hungarians. They wanted to imitate the West instead of returning to true Hungarian roots. Since there were a fair number of urbanists who were of Jewish extraction, the völkisch crowd found its domestic enemies. It was perhaps Bíró’s and some of his cohorts’ bad conscience that assigned unintended meanings to the words “populist” and “nationalist.”

Viktor Orbán’s answer to the Tavares report

As soon as the vote in the European Parliament went against the Hungarian government, Viktor Orbán announced that a resolution will be introduced for the Hungarian parliament to adopt that will condemn the Tavares report.

And indeed, by this afternoon the proposed text of the resolution was already on László Kövér’s desk. The bill is signed by three Fidesz members of parliament: Antal Rogán, the leader of the Fidesz caucus, Gergely Gulyás, one of his deputies and the alleged constitutional expert of the party, and Máté Kocsis, mayor of District VIII and a very active young member of parliament.

This afternoon I heard an interview with Gergely Gulyás, in the course of which he was asked whether the idea for the resolution came from Viktor Orbán. Gulyás, who is one of the few Fidesz politicians for whom lying doesn’t come easily, paused. It was a very long pause. Eventually he found the right words: the prime minister can certainly identify with it.

What we must keep in mind is that the resolution comes from Fidesz the party and, as you will see, is at  least in part addressed to the government. So, strictly speaking, Viktor Orbán, the party chief, is asking Viktor Orbán, the prime minister, to do certain things.

Decree of Parliament on the equal treatment due to Hungary

1. We Hungarians entered into the family of European nations by establishing a state and adopting Christianity.

We Hungarians often stood up for European values. There were times when we defended these values with our blood against attacks from outside. In 1956 we armed ourselves against the communist dictatorship. In 1989 we contributed to unifying Europe with the demolition of the iron curtain.

We Hungarians entered into the European Union of our own free will.

We did that in the hope that we would join a community based on law, justice, and freedom.

We Hungarians  do not want a Europe where freedom is limited and not widened. We do not want a Europe where the larger ones abuse their power, where national sovereignty is violated, and where the smaller have to honor the larger. 

We have had enough of dictatorship after 40 years behind the iron curtain.

We Hungarians have always respected the desire of European Union institutions for dialogue, and we have always been ready for reasonable compromises. 

Therefore, we rightly expect the respect and equal treatment due to Hungary from the European Union’s institutions.

We expect the European Union to respect the rights that we acquired after our accession just as it would respect those of any other country. 

The Parliament of Hungary is surprised that the European Parliament passed a decree that it had no right to pass, that exceeded its jurisdiction. The European Parliament made demands, introduced new procedures, and created institutions that violate Hungary’s sovereignty as guaranteed in the fundamental treaty. 

With this decision the European Parliament went against basic European values and led the Union on a dangerous path.

The Hungarian Parliament is further worried by the undue influence of business interests that underlie this abuse of power.

Hungary is reducing the cost of energy paid by families. This may hurt the interests of many European companies that for years have had windfall profits from their monopoly in Hungary. It is unacceptable that the European Union tries to influence our homeland to further the interests of these companies.

The Hungarian Parliament believes that Europe is in danger if the interests of multinationals are realized at the expense of the rules laid down in the fundamental treaty.

Today we adopt a resolution to defend Hungary’s sovereignty and the equality of Hungarians in the European Union.

We call on the Hungarian government not to give in to the pressure of the European Union, not to let the nation’s rights guaranteed in the fundamental treaty be violated, and to continue the policies that make the lives of the Hungarian people easier.

2. This decree of Parliament will enter into force the day after its publication.”

The embellished historical commonplaces that introduce this resolution are to be expected. Hungarians always drag them out when they want to prove their European roots and vaunt their accomplishments in defending Europe from the eastern peril.

What is much more interesting is the government’s attempt to establish a connection between the Orbán government’s lowering of energy prices and the Tavares report which, after all, is about the Hungarian government’s transgression of democratic norms and not about economics. This alleged connection is ludicrous in and of itself, but if we consider that Rui Tavares has been working on this report for at least one and a half years and the Orbán government came up with the political masterstroke of lowering energy prices only a couple of months ago, it should be clear to everybody that there is absolutely no link between the two.

The attempt to cast business interests as a motivating force behind the Tavares report and its acceptance is more than tenuous. Support for it came largely from the left–the socialists, greens, and liberals who are not exactly known for their support of big business. The right- and right-of-center parties are by and large more pro-business. And a majority of their representatives stood by Viktor Orbán.

In his speech in parliament today Orbán again attacked the multinationals and the banks, but some Hungarians, it seems, want more than bellicose talk. Here are the first signs.

Today the verdict was handed down in a case that has been been in and out of court for two and a half years.  The plaintiff took out a foreign currency loan which he now finds impossible to pay back due to the weakening of the Hungarian forint. He claimed that he shouldn’t have to pay the loan back because the bank did not mention the bid-ask spread in the contract. Two lower courts decided in favor of the plaintiff. The case then moved up to the highest court, the Kúria. For a number of days demonstrators have stood in front of the building, waiting in a rather ugly mood. The verdict finally came: OTP, Hungary’s largest bank, is not liable. The plaintiff will have to pay his loan back.

Scuffle in front of Viktor Orbán’s house – Népszabadság, Photo Árpád Kurucz

The crowd outside was outraged at the verdict. One would have thought that the crowd would go OTP headquarters to vent their anger. But no, they headed toward Viktor Orbán’s private residence in Buda. One could see gallows and red-and-white striped flags (the favorite symbol of the Hungarian extreme right), interspersed with the Hungarian tricolor.

So, if Orbán thinks that by whipping up anti-business sentiment he will gain great political advantage, he might be mistaken. These dissatisfied people, it seems, blame him for being unable to “solve their problems.” After all, he promised that he would take care of those hundreds of thousands of people who lost their homes as a result of the collapse of the Hungarian forint over the last few years.

As for Viktor Orbán’s speech in parliament, he didn’t add much to the content of the proposed resolution, except for getting close to calling those Hungarian MEPs who voted for the Tavares report traitors. However, Attila Mesterházy in a forceful speech condemned the Orbán government, the prime minister’s “business interests,” and his “majoritarian rule.”

The Fidesz back benchers are the noisiest ones on the right and unfortunately they are also ignorant. For example, when Mesterházy reminded Viktor Orbán that when he was in opposition he went so far as to ask the European People’s Party to use its influence in the European Union to stop any payment to Hungary, they tried to drown out Mesterházy. I’m sure most of them thought that this was a lie. It was, however, absolutely true. Orbán rarely if ever thought about collateral damage to the country as a whole in his relentless attacks on the socialist-liberal government.

In addition, Attila Mesterházy and Gábor Harangozó on behalf of MSZP turned in amendments to the proposed resolution. Since there is no chance of Fidesz ever accepting any amendment coming from the opposition, by now parties on the left write these amendments in jest. It is an amusing piece that is worth reading.

Kim Lane Scheppele: In praise of the Tavares Report

Today Europe acted to hold the Hungarian government to the constitutional values that it eagerly endorsed when it joined the European Union nearly a decade ago.

The action came in the form of the Tavares Report which sailed through the European Parliament with many votes to spare.  The report provides a bill of particulars against the Fidesz government and lays out a strong program to guide European Union institutions in bringing Hungary back into the European fold.   With the passage of this report, Europe has finally said no to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his constitutional revolution.

The Tavares Report is by far the strongest and most consequential official condemnation of the Fidesz consolidation of power over the last three years.  And it creates a strong set of tools for European institutions to use in defending the long-term prospects for Hungarian democracy.

The report passed with a surprisingly strong vote:   370 in favor, 248 against and 82 abstentions.   In a Parliament split almost evenly between left and right, this tally gave the lie to the Hungarian government’s claim that the report was merely a conspiracy of the left.  With about 50 of the 754 MEPs absent, the total number of yes votes was still larger than the total number of MEPs of all of the left parties combined.   In short, even if all MEPs had been present, the left alone still couldn’t account for all of those votes.   And since the 82 abstentions had the effect of allowing the report to go forward, they should be read as soft “yeses” rather than undecided or negative votes.

Most of the abstentions no doubt came from Fidesz’s own party in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP).  Many EPP members signaled ahead of time that they could not back Orbán but also would not vote overtly against the position of their party, which officially supported him without whipping the votes.    FIdesz had been counting on party discipline to save it.  But now it is clear that Fidesz is terribly isolated within the EPP.

The tally on the final report was not a roll-call vote, so we do not know for sure just who voted for it in the end.  But the roll-call votes on the proposed amendments to the bill (see pp. 106-119 of this complicated document)  revealed that many members of the European People’s Party (EPP) and the even-more-conservative group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ERC) voted to keep the report from being diluted at crucial junctures.   Each attempt to weaken the report was rejected openly by 18-22 EPP votes and by 8-12 ERC votes.   We can guess that the MEPs who rejected the hostile changes must have voted in favor of the report in the end, along with even more of their colleagues who could at that point vote anonymously.

For a government that believes that majorities are everything and supermajorities are divine, it must have been hard for Fidesz to see only one-third of those in the European Parliament voting in its defense, when conservatives occupy about half of the seats.   Since many of the votes in the Fidesz column were from cranky Euro-skeptics who simply did not want the EU to gain more powers rather than from those who were solidly backing the broader Fidesz view of the world, the defeat is even more humiliating.    Where was the United European Right when Orbán needed them?   Apparently not in his camp.

When he dramatically appeared in the European Parliament for the debate yesterday, Orbán claimed that the report represented the persecution of a well-meaning right-wing government by the unified and hostile European left.

Today, with this extraordinary vote, we saw a coalition of left and right MEPs standing up together for the values of Europe.

The Tavares report is named after Rui Tavares, the Portuguese MEP who was the rapporteur on this patient and careful study of the Hungarian constitutional revolution.  He deserves much of the credit for the factually impeccable report and as well as for skillfully guiding it through a complicated and perilous process.   Despite repeated attempts to amend the report, gut its strong conclusions and weaken its remedies by Fidesz MEPs and their allies, all efforts to change the report in any substantial way failed at every stage.

Rui Tavares

With its acceptance today of the Tavares Report, the European Parliament has created a new framework for enforcing the principles of Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union, which proclaims that the Union is “founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.”

So what, concretely, does the report do?  It puts a very clever system of monitoring and assessment in place.    While there are many elements in the report, the most important four elements are these, identified by paragraph number in the report as voted by the Parliament today:

1.   An “Article 2 Alarm Agenda” which requires the European Commission in all of its dealings with Hungary to raise only Article 2 issues until such time as Hungary comes into compliance with the report (para. 69).  This Alarm Agenda effectively blocks all other dealings between the Commission and Hungary until Hungary addresses the issues raised in the report.
2. A “Trilogue” (a three-way dialogue) in which the Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament will each delegate members to a new committee that will engage in a close review of all activities of the Hungarian government relevant to the report (Para. 85).   This committee is charged with assessing the progress that Hungary is making in complying with the list of specific objections that the report identifies.  The Trilogue sets up a system of intrusive monitoring, much more intrusive than the Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) from which Hungary just escaped.   Under the EDP, European bodies only looked at the budget’s bottom line to determine whether Hungary’s deficit was within acceptable bounds.  Under the Trilogue, the committee can examine anything that is on the long list of particulars that the report identifies as within its scope.
3. A “Copenhagen Commission” or high-level expert body through which a panel of distinguished and independent experts will be assigned the power to review continued compliance with the Copenhagen criteria used for admission to the EU on the part of any member state (para. 78-80).   The idea behind this body, elaborated in a report by my Princeton colleague Jan-Werner Müller, is that non-political experts should be given the task of judging whether member states are still acting on the values of Article 2.   Since Orbán kept claiming double standards and dirty politics all of the way through this process in the European Parliament, a Copenhagen Commission consisting of impeccable experts and modeled on the Council of Europe’s Commission for Democracy through Law (the Venice Commission) would move the process of fact-finding and assessment from political officials to non-partisan experts.
4. And in the background, there is still Article 7 of the Treaty of the European Union.  Article 7, which identifies a procedure through which an EU member state can be deprived of its vote in the European Council and therefore would lose representation in the decision-making processes of the EU, is considered the “nuclear option” – unusable because extreme.   But the Tavares Report holds out the possibility of invoking Article 7 if the Hungarian government does not comply with the monitoring program and reform its ways  (para. 86).    Because the Tavares Report lays out detailed expectations of the Hungarian government, the Parliament and the Council who would have to vote on Article 7 in the end would have a strong factual record to work with if they decided to go nuclear.

These are important tools in the toolkit that European institutions can now use to ensure that a member state of the European Union maintains its European constitutional commitments.

Yesterday at the plenary debate, both Commission President José Manual Barroso and Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Viviane Reding indicated their willingness to follow the Parliament’s direction.    We can therefore expect an eager uptake from the Commission on the elements of the report that require the Commission’s active participation.

But perhaps the most breathtaking part of the report is the list of what these various monitoring bodies can examine.    Here it is worth quoting at length from the report itself, because the scope and breadth of the complaints against the Hungarian government indicate that these monitoring processes will be authorized to look at the most fundamental elements of what it means to be a robust democracy committed to the rule of law and the protection of human rights.  Here is the list of items that the Hungarian government must address, taken from para. 71 of the report, where the Parliament . . .

Urges the Hungarian authorities to implement as swiftly as possible all the measures the European Commission as the guardian of the treaties deems necessary in order to fully comply with EU law, fully comply with the decisions of the Hungarian Constitutional Court and implement as swiftly as possible the following recommendations, in line with the recommendations of the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe and other international bodies for the protection of the rule of law and fundamental rights, with a view to fully complying with the rule of law and its key requirements on the constitutional setting, the system of checks and balances and the independence of the judiciary, as well as on strong safeguards for fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, the media and religion or belief, protection of minorities, action to combat discrimination, and the right to property:

On the Fundamental Law:

–             to fully restore the supremacy of the Fundamental Law by removing from it those provisions previously declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court;

–             to reduce the recurrent use of cardinal laws in order to leave policy areas such as family, social, fiscal and budget matters to ordinary legislation and majorities;

–             to implement the recommendations of the Venice Commission and, in particular, to revise the list of policy areas requiring a qualified majority with a view to ensuring meaningful future elections;

–             to secure a lively parliamentary system which also respects opposition forces by allowing a reasonable time for a genuine debate between the majority and the opposition and for participation by the wider public in the legislative procedure;

–             to ensure the widest possible participation by all parliamentary parties in the constitutional process, even though the relevant special majority is held by the governing coalition alone;

On checks and balances:

–             to fully restore the prerogatives of the Constitutional Court as the supreme body of constitutional protection, and thus the primacy of the Fundamental Law, by removing from its text the limitations on the Constitutional Court’s power to review the constitutionality of any changes to the Fundamental Law, as well as the abolition of two decades of constitutional case law; to restore the right of the Constitutional Court to review all legislation without exception, with a view to counterbalancing parliamentary and executive actions and ensuring full judicial review; such a judicial and constitutional review may be exerted in different ways in different Member States, depending on the specificities of each national constitutional history, but once established, a Constitutional Court – like the Hungarian one, which after the fall of the communist regime has rapidly built a reputation among Supreme Courts in Europe – should not be subject to measures aimed at reducing its competences and thus undermining the rule of law;

–             to restore the possibility for the judicial system to refer to the case law issued before the entry into force of the Fundamental Law, in particular in the field of fundamental rights;

–             to strive for consensus when electing the members of the Constitutional Court, with meaningful involvement of the opposition, and to ensure that the members of the court are free from political influence;

–             to restore the prerogatives of the parliament in the budgetary field and thus secure the full democratic legitimacy of budgetary decisions by removing the restriction of parliamentary powers by the non‑parliamentary Budget Council;

–             to provide clarifications on how the Hungarian authorities intend to remedy the premature termination of the term of office of senior officials with a view to securing the institutional independence of the data protection authority;

On the independence of the judiciary:

–             to fully guarantee the independence of the judiciary by ensuring that the principles of irremovability and guaranteed term of office of judges, the rules governing the structure and composition of the governing bodies of the judiciary and the safeguards on the independence of the Constitutional Court are enshrined in the Fundamental Law;

–             to promptly and correctly implement the abovementioned decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 6 November 2012 and of the Hungarian Constitutional Court, by enabling the dismissed judges who so wish to be reinstated in their previous positions, including those presiding judges whose original executive posts are no longer vacant;

–             to establish objective selection criteria, or to mandate the National Judicial Council to establish such criteria, with a view to ensuring that the rules on the transfer of cases respect the right to a fair trial and the principle of a lawful judge;

–             to implement the remaining recommendations laid down in the Venice Commission’s Opinion No CDL-AD(2012)020 on the cardinal acts on the judiciary that were amended following the adoption of Opinion CDL-AD(2012)001;  [NOTE:  Venice Commission reports on Hungary can be found here.]

On the electoral reform:

–              to invite the Venice Commission and the OSCE/ ODIHR to carry out a joint analysis of the comprehensively changed legal and institutional framework of the elections and to invite the ODIHR for a Needs Assessment Mission and a long and short term election observation.

–             to ensure balanced representation within the National Election Committee;

On the media and pluralism:

–             to fulfil the commitment to further discuss cooperation activities at expert level on the more long‑term perspective of the freedom of the media, building on the most important remaining recommendations of the 2012 legal expertise of the Council of Europe;

–             to ensure timely and close involvement of all relevant stakeholders, including media professionals, opposition parties and civil society, in any further review of this legislation, which regulates such a fundamental aspect of the functioning of a democratic society, and in the process of implementation;

–             to observe the positive obligation arising from European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence under Article 10 ECHR to protect freedom of expression as one of the preconditions for a functioning democracy;

–             to respect, guarantee, protect and promote the fundamental right to freedom of expression and information, as well as media freedom and pluralism, and to refrain from developing or supporting mechanisms that threaten media freedom and journalistic and editorial independence;

–             to make sure that objective, legally binding procedures and mechanisms are in place for the selection and appointment of heads of public media, management boards, media councils and regulatory bodies, in line with the principles of independence, integrity, experience and professionalism, representation of the entire political and social spectrum, legal certainty and continuity;

–             to provide legal guarantees regarding full protection of the confidentiality-of-sources principle and to strictly apply related European Court of Human Rights case law;

–             to ensure that rules relating to political information throughout the audiovisual media sector guarantee fair access to different political competitors, opinions and viewpoints, in particular on the occasion of elections and referendums, allowing citizens to form their own opinions without undue influence from one dominant opinion‑forming power;

On respect for fundamental rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities:

–             to take, and continue with, positive actions and effective measures to ensure that the fundamental rights of all persons, including persons belonging to minorities and homeless persons, are respected and to ensure their implementation by all competent public authorities; when reviewing the definition of ‘family’, to take into account the legislative trend in Europe to broaden the scope of the definition of family and the negative impact of a restricted definition of family on the fundamental rights of those who will be excluded by the new and more restrictive definition;

–             to take a new approach, finally assuming its responsibilities towards homeless – and therefore vulnerable – people, as set out in the international treaties on human rights to which Hungary is a signatory, such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and thus to promote fundamental rights rather than violating them by including in its Fundamental Law provisions that criminalise homeless people;

–             calls on the Hungarian Government to do all in its power to strengthen the mechanism for social dialogue and comprehensive consultation and to guarantee the rights associated with this;

–             calls on the Hungarian Government to increase its efforts to integrate the Roma and to lay down targeted measures to ensure their protection. Racist threats directed at the Roma must be unequivocally and resolutely repelled;

On freedom of religion or belief and recognition of churches:

–             to establish clear, neutral and impartial requirements and institutional procedures for the recognition of religious organisations as churches, which respect the duty of the State to remain neutral and impartial in its relations with the various religions and beliefs and to provide effective means of redress in cases of non‑recognition or lack of a decision, in line with the constitutional requirements set out in the abovementioned Decision 6/2013 of the Constitutional Court;

One more item was added to this list by amendment from Rui Tavares in the Parliament this morning:

– to cooperate with the European institutions in order to ensure that the provisions of the new National Security Law comply with the fundamental principles of the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, respect for private and family life and the right to an effective remedy.

In short, this is a huge list of items, which together constitute the core of the Fidesz power grab.  This section of the report identifies the list of things that the Hungarian government must now change, and the mechanisms I identified above are the key ones through which compliance will be monitored and assessed.

It is hard to imagine a more sweeping indictment of the Fidesz constitutional revolution in Hungary over these last three years.

But back to where we started:  with today’s vote in the European Parliament.   This long list of offending actions of the Hungarian government was agreed to by left and right in the European Parliament, by a large majority and with serious tools to ensure that the Hungarian government changes its ways and returns to the path of democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights.

The European Parliament is the most diverse and democratic institution in Europe.  One day when the history of the European constitution is written, the Tavares Report and its enthusiastic acceptance in the European Parliament will stand for Europe at its best.

The European Parliament’s debate on Hungary

I spent almost three hours watching the debate in the European Parliament on the Tavares report. We discussed this report at length at the time of its passage in the LIBE Commission of the European Parliament. In addition, I published Rui Tavares’s letter to the Hungarian people both in English and in Hungarian. So, the readers of Hungarian Spectrum are aware that the report is a thoroughly researched document that in many ways echoes the findings of the independent judges of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.

I found two good summaries of the debate, both in Hungarian. One appeared in Népszabadság and the other on the new Internet website called 444! But it is one thing to read a summary and another to see the debate live. Just to watch Viktor Orbán’s face was itself educational. Sometimes he looked vaguely amused, but most of the time his smile was sardonic. Who can forget that disdainful expression on Orbán’s face when one of his critics, Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the liberals in the European parliament and former prime minister of Belgium, mentioned the name of  György Konrád, “the great Hungarian writer”? And when he heard something he didn’t like, Orbán raised his eyebrows and shook his head in disbelief. He considered all criticism utterly baseless and, through body language and facial expressions, made no secret of it. It’s too bad that most of the people in the chamber didn’t see all that since Orbán sat in the front row.

Viktor Orbán listening to the speeches / Reuters, Vincent Kessler

Unfortunately the camera didn’t show Orbán when several people tried to explain to him that his concept of democracy is peculiar. He believes in the “dictatorship of the majority” or “majoritarian rule.” Verhofstadt even invoked John Stuart Mill’s words on the subject in his work On Liberty. In fact, one of the major criticisms centered around the nature of democracy and whether Hungary can still be called a democracy. If one were to ask Verhofstadt he would say: “No, Hungary is not a democracy anymore but ‘demokratúra’ as György Konrád called it.” Several other critics agreed with Verhofstadt although they may not have been so explicit.

A second core topic was the question of freedom and the Orbán government’s “war of independence” against the European Union. Several people expressed their bafflement at the very idea of defending the country from a Union to which Hungary belongs. Actually, here again two worldviews clashed. The one held by Viktor Orbán and his entourage maintains that nation states are the only legitimate formations and that they shouldn’t be superseded in any way by a supranational entity such as the European Union. If one holds this view, as Orbán does, then it is perfectly understandable that he defends his nation against the encroachment of the European Union. The problem is that Hungary joined the European Union of its own volition and thereby its government is obliged to follow EU rules. Orbán attempts to resolve this apparent conflict by claiming that the Union is overstepping its authority, and therefore he has every right to resist its attempt at a “guardianship” that he will never accept.

Another important topic of discussion was Orbán’s interpretation of the criticism of his government as an attack on Hungary and the Hungarian people. Several critics rejected this view, making it clear that their criticisms are directed against the Orbán government and not the Hungarian people. In fact, some of the speakers argued that in their opinion it is the Hungarian people who must be shielded against the authoritarian behavior and laws of their own government.

As for Viktor Orbán, he had two opportunities to speak. At the beginning, right after Rui Tavares and Juán Manuel Barroso, and at the end, just before the leaders of the various parliamentary caucuses could answer him. In his first speech he was quite polite and a great deal less aggressive than is his wont. However, after listening to the debate where the Christian Democratic and Conservative voices were drowned out by speeches delivered by the liberals, socialists, and greens, Orbán returned to his true self. As Gabriella Zimmer (a German socialist) said, Orbán didn’t come to Strasbourg “to debate”; he came to express his anger at what he considers to be interference in Hungarian domestic affairs that are within the sole jurisdiction of the Hungarian government, parliament, and courts. He finished his speech with a refusal to accept tutelage from Brussels. For good measure he accused them of  having double standards and of defending the multinational corporations and banks. I had the feeling that by that time Orbán believed that he had nothing to lose. It was no longer necessary to try to mollify the EU parliamentarians. No matter what he does, I suspect he reasoned, the vote will go against him.

And a few more words about the performance of Fidesz and Jobbik MEPs. What can I say? It was embarrassing. Szájer’s comments were the most outrageous. He was not on the list of official speakers but he asked to be recognized perhaps three times. In the first instance he outright lied when he announced that foreign investment was never greater in Hungary than in the last two or three years. Then he claimed that the members of the European Union are afraid of the truth and that’s why they don’t want to give Orbán the opportunity to speak. Both Verhofstadt and Martin Schulz, the president of  the EP, corrected Szájer. After all, they were the ones who asked Viktor Orbán to come to the plenary session of the European Parliament. But that was not enough for Szájer. He retorted that even in Stalin’s show trials more time was allotted to the accused than to the accusers. Well, that’s when Martin Schulz’s patience ran out. He reprimanded Szájer for making any comparison between Stalin’s show trials and the European Union. But Szájer is not the kind of guy who knows when to stop. He got up again and tried to explain away his unfortunate remark. He repeated his reference to Stalin’s show trials and added that it was only the time limit that he had in mind. Schulz was not impressed and rebuked him again. Szájer did a disservice to the Fidesz cause.

Kinga Gál, another Fidesz MEP, was one of the official speakers. She didn’t fare any better than Szájer. In her speech she challenged the democratic nature of the European Parliament that voted in committee for the Tavares report. Schulz gave her a piece of his mind. He told her that it is impossible to claim that majority rule in Hungary is perfectly legitimate while questioning the democratic nature of majority rule in the European Parliament. After all, the majority of LIBE members voted for the Tavares report.

The third Fidesz MEP, Ágnes Hankiss, asked to raise a “question.” It turned out that she in fact planned to deliver a lecture on the injustices of the Tavares report. Schulz interrupted her, saying that she was abusing the privilege of posing questions. Hankiss tried to go on but was stopped.

And if that weren’t enough, we had the privilege of listening to Krisztina Morvai (Jobbik) twice. No EU parliamentary caucus accepted Jobbik and therefore they sit as unaffiliated members. Thus she had the privilege of speaking twice, just as the other leaders of the various parties. She sported a blouse adorned with Hungarian folk motifs and held up a sign reading “HUNGARY ≠COLONY.” Otherwise, although Orbán emphasized that he is the one who is most fiercely attacked by the far-right Jobbik, Morvai defended Fidesz and its policies all the way while accusing Viviane Reding of meddling in Hungarian affairs. Her second speech was especially remarkable. She recalled her days working with battered women who often thought that they could change their abusive husband’s behavior by pleasing him, working harder, and being the best of housewives. But eventually when the husband’s behavior remained the same, they came to the conclusion that there was only one remedy: divorce. So, Hungary should pack up and leave the Union if this abuse continues. After that ringing defense of Fidesz it will be difficult for Orbán to maintain his fierce opposition to the far right. After all, they speak the same language and Jobbik fights alongside Fidesz for the “honor of Hungary.” Frank Engel (Luxembourg EPP member) sarcastically remarked immediately afterwards that he hoped that “Ms Morvai has not just offered to go into coalition with Fidesz.”

The vote will take place tomorrow at 11:30 European time or 5:30 EDT. I will be watching.

A severe blow to the Orbán government: The Tavares report is accepted by the LIBE Commission

After less than a day of very hard work getting everything installed and tweaked on my new computer I’m up and running with only minor temporary inconveniences. So, it is time to return to my daily routine of  monitoring the Hungarian media. Today I’ll concentrate on the Tavares report that was prepared for a vote in the European Parliamentary Committee of  Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE).

You may recall that I left off with the approximately 500 amendments to the draft report, of which about 200 were submitted by Fidesz MEPs and a Slovak and a Romanian member of parliament of Hungarian nationality. The vote was scheduled for June 19.

Given the enormous number of amendments, Hungarian newspapers predicted that the session would be very long, taken up with debating each of the submitted amendments, and they seemed to be surprised that after only two or three hours it was all over. They also emphasized that the committee was highly divided on the issue and so the vote one way or the other would be very close. That prediction also turned out to be erroneous. Of the 58 people present (the committee has 60 members) 31 voted for the report, 19 against it, and 8 abstained. I wouldn’t call that exactly close. In fact, observers in Brussels were somewhat surprised at the outcome. They expected a much closer vote, considering that half of the members come from either the European People’s Party (EPP) or the group of conservatives and reformers.

Kinga Gál (Fidesz), one of the deputy chairmen of LIBE, immediately announced that it was a lie that some EPP members voted for the Tavares report, adding that a few of them abstained. But the numbers don’t add up. Someone from that group had to endorse the report. After all, there were 29 right-of-center MEPs present. But even Fidesz MEPs had to admit that, in spite of very heavy lobbying, they failed to alter the text of the original proposal in any significant way. Most of the Fidesz amendments were thrown out.

One substantive suggestion came from the chairman of LIBE, Juan Fernando López, who proposed some additional text. He suggested that a serious investigation of the new Hungarian election laws be undertaken and that the Office of Human Rights actually monitor the forthcoming election. Quite a blow for a member country of the European Union. A first.

It seems that some Hungarian MEPs felt compelled to make a scene. I guess nobody who knows anything about Krisztina Morvai (Jobbik) will be terribly surprised to learn that she managed to wreak havoc in the committee meeting. Morvai is not a member of LIBE, she was there only as a spectator. Just before Chairman López called for a final vote, she interrupted the proceedings. She  denied the legality of the procedures followed by the committee and held up a poster reading: “The European Union is a dictatorship.” López warned her that “the European Parliament is not a circus.”

The toothless lion of the Chain Bridge, Budapest commons.wikipedia.org

As it turned out, some members of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats were convinced that Morvai was a Fidesz MEP; after all, her arguments in defense of the Hungarian government’s position were identical to those articulated by Enikő Győri, undersecretary in charge of European Union Affairs, except Győri used milder language. She called the report “deeply biased” and claimed that even the report’s facts don’t stand up to scrutiny. The committee discarded corrections of factual errors that EPP members submitted to the committee. Therefore, the Hungarian government still cannot subscribe to the report’s conclusions. She contended that the report is a political document that was heavily influenced by party politics. After all, she claimed, European parliamentary elections will be held next year and therefore it was predictable that the split in the committee was entirely along party lines. As we have seen, Győri is not exactly reliable on this point. Her verdict was that “the committee clearly overstepped its authority.”

The Fidesz MEPs went even further. They announced point blank that the Tavares report’s acceptance by the LIBE commission has “neither legal, nor budgetary, nor economic consequences.” The same is true of the possible adoption of the report by the full plenary session of the European Parliament sometime in July. One could ask: if the European Parliament is such a toothless lion, what on earth is the Fidesz delegation doing in Brussels? Why do they even bother to participate in the useless activities of the European Parliament?

As for the Tavares report, it is no more than “a party dictate of the European Left.” As far as the Fidesz delegation is concerned, this document is simply unacceptable. In any case, it is the end of the excessive deficit procedure that really matters and that was approved by Ecofin today. The delegation also expressed its optimism concerning a satisfactory resolution to the Hungarian government’s debate surrounding the fourth amendment to the new Hungarian constitution which, they are certain, will end in Hungary’s favor. I find this last prediction just a bit premature considering the very strong condemnation of the latest constitutional amendments by the Venice Commission, which is comprised of internationally renowned constitutional lawyers.

There is no question that the adoption of the Tavares report is a severe blow to the Hungarian government. The answers referencing bias, party politics, and the European Parliamentary election next year sound hollow, especially if one takes the trouble to read the Tavares report or the opinions of the Venice Commission.

Rui Tavares: Letter to the citizens of Hungary and his fellow European citizens

Source: aspirinab.com

As you all know by now, European Member of Parliament Rui Tavares, who represents Portugal, was the rapporteur of the 30-page draft report that is hailed by most experts on Hungarian affairs as a singularly perceptive analysis of the current state of Hungarian democracy. The Hungarian government and the pro-government media, by contrast, accused Tavares of partiality and ignorance. In no time they also  discovered that he was a communist–their ultimate insult, which is an absolutely baseless accusation. Rui Tavares is a member of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance. He is also a member of the parliamentary Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.  It was in this capacity that he probed into the present situation in Hungary.

Rui Tavares produced a thorough assessment of the constitutional changes that have taken place in the last two or three years and their effects on Hungarian democracy. The Hungarian government will have a difficult time countering his arguments, although intellectual hurdles have never seemed to deter them in the past. I already devoted a post to the amendments offered by some of the Fidesz members of the European Parliament and Hungarians nationals from Romania and Slovakia.

The pro-government Hungarian press called the draft report a “left-liberal ultimatum,” and the government spokesmen came close to describing it as a collection of baseless accusations. In light of the findings of the Venice Commission, however, it seems that Rui Tavares was spot on.

I assume that he is getting hundreds of accusatory letters because he decided to write a letter to Hungarian citizens, in English and in Hungarian, to explain what the document is all about. The letter also helps us better understand the inner workings of the European Parliament.

Below you will find the English original of Rui Tavares’s letter followed by its Hungarian translation. I think we should all thank Mr. Tavares for his work and his devotion to the cause of Hungarian democracy.  By the way, I understand that he has found Hungary such an interesting country that he has begun learning the language.

  * * *

Dear Hungarian citizens,

Dear EU fellow citizens,

I come from a country which was ruled during 48 years by an authoritarian regime. Twelve years after the end of this dictatorship, Portugal has acceded to the European Union, finally consolidating the democracy for which so many people had struggled during so many years.

Your country, Hungary, has suffered during more than 40 years of a horrible regime. In 1989, you finally got your freedom from the communist regime and a little over a decade later your country became a Member of the European Union.

The European project may have imperfections, but its main purpose serves us all – and mainly those European citizens like us whose countries have faced alone many years of terror under undemocratic regimes. The foundations of our common endeavour are described in article 2 of the revised Treaty on the European Union of 2009, which states that “the Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities”. Article 2 then goes on to say that “these values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.” Hungary is always cited as an example in this process: your country actively participated in the drafting of this important article – the first substantive commitment of the Union – and was the first EU Member State to ratify the Treaty.

The promotion of the values of democracy, rule of law and human rights is also the first objective of the Union, according to article 3. And then there is another important article in the Treaties which has been regularly and fairly quoted by your government. It is article 4: “The Union shall respect the equality of Member States before the Treaties […] The Member States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union’s tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives”.

These Treaties entered into force in December 2009 and since then Member States, the European Institutions and us all as European citizens have to deal and comply with this new and recent legal basis.

In February 2012, on the basis of this new legal framework, the European Parliament decided to have a report on the situation of the Fundamental Rights in Hungary. As any other official text by the European Parliament, the decision to draft this report was made by the majority of the democratically elected members of this house. Let me remind you that, since the last European Elections in 2009, no single political group has the majority in the European Parliament, although the by far biggest group is the EPP to which the party of the current Hungarian government belongs. It has both been said that there is a right-wing majority at the European Parliament, and that there is a left-wing majority. But the most important point is that all 754 Members of the European Parliament take seriously their responsibility to guarantee that the fundamental rights of the 500 million EU citizens are respected, protected and promoted.

Two months after this decision, I was appointed as rapporteur for this report, the first one dealing with the contents that I have described above in the case of a specific country. There were many constitutional and legal changes in Hungary in recent times, and to assess them fairly is a task that needs to be conducted in a careful and respectful manner. In order to ensure a transparent and fair procedure, I have decided that the first step would be the drafting of 5 working documents on sectorial aspects of the legal, institutional and constitutional changes in Hungary. This was an open and collaborative work and, for the first time in the European Parliament, the working documents – which are normally only signed by the rapporteur – were drafted by me and one representative of 5 of the main political groups represented at the European Parliament: the EPP, the S&D, ALDE, GREENS/EFA, ECR and GUE/NGL. These working-documents were one by one debated in the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament, usually abbreviated as LIBE. We have also received comments from the Hungarian government and the working documents were therefore updated taking into consideration the Hungarian authorities’ position.

This permanent dialogue – respecting pluralism and democracy at the European and at the national level – was very important for the last year’s preparatory work to the drafting of this report.

The text that I have presented is the result that I have derived of this broad consultation. But this is not the end of the procedures. This draft was submitted to a first debate, it passed by a phase of amendments that were considered in subsequent debate and it will then be voted in the Civil Liberties’ Committee; we will then have another stage of amendments by the political groups and then, finally, a debate and a vote in the plenary of the European Parliament. The respect of this parliamentary procedure with sufficient time and occasion for all voices do be heard is crucial to ensure that the report is not one-sided, incorrect or somehow applying double standards.

If you read the draft report, you will find out that it chooses to pursue a constructive political dialogue with the Hungarian authorities in the next months, together with the other European Institutions. And the main objective of this dialogue is precisely to avoid a risk of breach of the foundational values listed in article 2. On the other hand, you will not find two things that have been incorrectly mentioned in public debate: there is no mention of withdrawing the voting rights of Hungary at this stage (under article 7.2 of the Treaties) and I have refused to raise the possibility of economic sanctions to be directed at Hungary.

The majority of the specific recommendations you will find in the report do not concern Hungary but the European Institutions themselves. Indeed, this should not and is not only about Hungary. This is about any other Member of the European Union. This is about us all, as European citizens. It is why I am of the opinion that we have to have concrete mechanisms to ensure that the values stated in article 2 are not at risk. And that these mechanisms should follow objective assessments of all Member-States, big or small, be they founding members or recent accessions to our Union. Your government has correctly raised this issue, which I try to tackle in the report by suggesting the creation of a non-political high-level group that would follow up, and make recommendations, on the work carried out by EU institutions, starting with the European Parliament itself.

The sovereignty of Hungary must be respected; I will indeed welcome any comment by the Hungarian authorities and will amend myself my own text in case of need. We have done it with the working documents I have told you about, and we will do it with this draft report.

I am sure that you are already aware of the dialogue that we have had and will continue to have with the Hungarian authorities and I hope you will closely follow the work we are doing all together on this report.

You will find the Hungarian version of the report in the Civil Liberties committee webpage; I invite you to read it and to send your comments to my email address.

Best regards,

Rui Tavares, Member of the European Parliament

* * *

Kedves magyar polgárok!

Kedves európai uniós polgártársaim!

Olyan országból származom, ahol egy autoriter hatalom döntött sorsunkról 48 éven át. 12 évvel a diktatúra vége után Portugália csatlakozott az Európai Unióhoz, és megszilárdítottuk hazánkban a demokráciát, amelyre oly sok ember vágyott oly hosszú ideje.

Az Önök országa, Magyarország is egy szörnyű rezsim uralma alatt szenvedett több mint 40 évig. 1989-ben azonban végre felszabadult a kommunista diktatúra alól, és másfél évtized múlva csatlakozott az Európai Unióhoz.

Az Európai Unió sem tökéletes, de a fő célja mindannyiunk érdekét szolgálja – és kifejezetten azokét, akiknek a hazája a miénkhez hasonlóan sok éven át egyedül nézett szembe egy diktatórikus hatalom terrorjával.  Közös törekvéseink alapját a 2009-ben elfogadott Szerződés az Európai Unióról 2. cikke tartalmazza, amely kimondja, hogy “az Unió az emberi méltóság tiszteletben tartása, a szabadság, a demokrácia, az egyenlőség, a jogállamiság, valamint az emberi jogok – ideértve a kisebbségekhez tartozó személyek jogait – tiszteletben tartásának értékein alapul.” A cikk így folytatódik: „Ezek az értékek közösek a tagállamokban, a pluralizmus, a megkülönböztetés tilalma, a tolerancia, az igazságosság, a szolidaritás, valamint a nők és a férfiak közötti egyenlőség társadalmában.” Magyarországot mindig példaként emlegetik a 2. cikk megalkotásához vezető folyamattal kapcsolatban, hiszen aktívan részt vett a cikk megszövegezésében, amelyben az EU először deklarálta az alapvető értékei iránti elköteleződését. Magyarország elsőként ratifikálta az új szerződést a tagállamok közül.

A demokrácia, a jogállamiság és az emberi jogok előmozdítása az Unió első számú célja a Szerződés 3. cikke szerint. Létezik még egy nagyon fontos elem, a 4. cikk, melyet az Önök kormánya is sokszor idéz: “Az Unió tiszteletben tartja a tagállamoknak a Szerződések előtti egyenlőségét […] A tagállamok segítik az Uniót feladatainak teljesítésében, és tartózkodnak minden olyan intézkedéstől, amely veszélyeztetheti az Unió célkitűzéseinek megvalósítását.”

Az Európai Unió szerződései 2009 decemberében léptek hatályba, és azóta a tagállamoknak, az európai intézményeknek és nekünk, európai polgároknak tiszteletben kell tartanunk ezt az új jogi alapvetést.

2012 februárjában az új jogi kereteknek megfelelően az Európai Parlament úgy döntött, hogy jelentést készít az alapvető jogok helyzetéről Magyarországon. Mint minden hivatalos dokumentum esetében, amely az Európai Parlamentben készül, a demokratikusan megválasztott képviselők többsége határozott ennek a jelentésnek az elfogadásáról is. Hadd emlékeztessem Önöket, hogy a 2009-es európai választások óta egyik parlamenti frakció sem rendelkezik a szavazatok többségével, habár a legnagyobb képviselőcsoport az Európai Néppárté, amelyhez a jelenlegi magyar kormánypárt is tartozik. Sokszor hallani, hogy az Európai Parlamentben jobboldali többség van, mások szerint meg baloldali többség. Ami igazán fontos, hogy a Parlament mind a 754 tagja komolyan vegye a felelősségét, és biztosítsa az 500 millió uniós polgár alapvető jogainak érvényesítését, tiszteletben tartását és megóvását.

Két hónappal a parlamenti döntés után engem jelöltek ki a jelentés elkészítésére, amely az első a maga nemében, mivel az említett értékeket vizsgálja egy tagország esetében. Az alkotmányt és a törvényeket nagyon sok alkalommal módosították az utóbbi időben Magyarországon; mindezek korrekt értékelése során körültekintéssel és tisztelettel kell eljárni. Azért, hogy biztosítsam az eljárás átláthatóságát és elfogulatlanságát, úgy döntöttem, hogy első lépésként öt munkadokumentumot készítek, kategóriákra bontva a jogi, intézményi és alkotmányos változásokat. A munka az átláthatóságra és az együttműködésre épült, és – az Európai Parlament történetében először – a munkadokumentumokat, amelyeket általában csak a jelentéstevő jegyzi, az öt legnagyobb politikai csoport képviselőivel közösen szövegeztem meg (Európai Néppárt, Szocialisták és Demokraták Progresszív Szövetsége, Liberálisok és Demokraták Szövetsége Európáért, Zöldek/Európai Szabad Szövetség, Európai Konzervatívok és Reformerek, Európai Baloldal/Északi Baloldal). Ezeket a munkadokumentumokat külön-külön megvitatta az Állampolgári jogi, bel- és igazságügyi bizottság, amelyet általában „LIBE” néven rövidítenek.  Emellett megkaptuk a magyar kormány véleményét is, és a munkadokumentumokat a magyar hatóságok álláspontjának figyelembevételével frissítettük.

Ez a folyamatos párbeszéd – amely tiszteletben tartotta a pluralizmus és a demokrácia követelményeit mind európai, mind nemzeti szinten – nagyon fontos részét képezte az elmúlt év előkészítő munkájának.

A jelentés tervezete, amelyet bemutattam a szakbizottságnak, ennek a széles körű konzultációnak az eredménye. A folyamat azonban itt még nem ért véget. A szöveget először megvitatta a LIBE bizottság. Majd beérkeztek a módosító javaslatok, amelyekről a megvitatásuk után végül a LIBE bizottság fog szavazni. Ezek után a képviselőcsoportok nyújthatják be módosító javaslataikat a szöveghez, majd az Európai Parlament plenáris ülése fogja megvitatni a jelentést, és végül szavazni fog a végleges szövegről. Ez a parlamenti eljárás megfelelő időt és lehetőséget biztosít arra, hogy mindenki hozzászólhasson. Mindez elengedhetetlen ahhoz, hogy a jelentés ne legyen egyoldalú, ne tartalmazzon hibákat és ne mérjen kettős mércével.

Ha elolvassa a jelentéstervezetet, látni fogja: a cél az, hogy a következő hónapokban építő jellegű politikai párbeszéd alakuljon ki a magyar hatóságok és az európai intézmények között. Ennek a párbeszédnek a lényege pedig pontosan az, hogy elkerüljük annak a veszélyét, hogy a 2. cikkben megnevezett alapvető értékek sérüljenek. Másrészt észre fogja venni, hogy két, jelenleg közszájon forgó elem is hiányzik a jelentéstervezetből: a szöveg nem említi, hogy meg kellene vonni Magyarország szavazati jogát a Szerződés 7. cikk (2) bekezdése alapján.  Azzal sem értek egyet, hogy Magyarországgal szemben gazdasági szankciókat kellene kilátásba helyezni.

A jelentéstervezetben felsorolt javaslatok legnagyobb része nem is Magyarországot, hanem az európai intézményeket érinti. A jelentés nem szólhat és nem is szól kizárólag Magyarországról. A jelentés az EU valamennyi tagállamáról, mindannyiunkról, európai polgárokról szól. Ezért az a véleményem, hogy be kell vezetnünk olyan konkrét eljárásokat, amelyekkel biztosíthatjuk a 2. cikk alapértékeinek sérthetetlenségét. Úgy gondolom, hogy ezeknek az eljárásoknak objektív alapokon kell nyugodniuk, és minden tagállamra érvényesnek kell lenniük, legyen az kisebb vagy nagyobb ország, alapító vagy nemrégiben csatlakozott tagállam. Az Önök kormánya jó indítványt tett ezzel kapcsolatban, és én is pontosan ezt szeretném tenni: olyan politikamentes, magas szintű szerv létrehozását javaslom, amely figyelemmel kíséri az EU intézményeinek munkáját és javaslatokkal él ezzel kapcsolatban ― kezdve az Európai Parlamenttel.

Magyarország szuverenitását tiszteletben kell tartani. Éppen ezért üdvözlöm a magyar hatóságok bármilyen észrevételét. Én magam fogom módosítani a saját jelentésemet, amennyiben szükséges lesz. Az említett munkadokumentumokkal is pontosan így jártunk el, és a jelenlegi jelentéstervezettel sem lesz másképp.

Biztos vagyok benne, hogy hallottak már arról a párbeszédről, melyet a magyar hatóságokkal folytatunk, és remélem, hogy figyelemmel fogják kísérni közös munkánkat a jelentéssel kapcsolatban.

A jelentéstervezet magyar nyelvű változatát megtalálhatja az Állampolgári jogok bizottságának honlapján. Kérem, olvassa el a tervezetet, és javaslatait küldje el bátran e-mailben, az Európai Parlament honlapján található címemre.

Szívélyes üdvözlettel:

Rui Tavares, európai parlamenti képviselő

Coming to an understanding with Viktor Orbán and his followers?

Yesterday’s post didn’t excite too many people. But how can one compete with Trianon? Who cares about the LIBE Commission’s report and the 500 some proposed “amendments,” mostly from Fidesz MPs and their Hungarian friends from Slovakia and Romania? On top of it all some people didn’t even get the details although I gave a link to the amendments that are available on the Internet.

But isn’t it the case that these amendments are a hundred times more relevant to the fate of the Hungarian people than absolutely useless discussions of a treaty, however just or unjust it was, that cannot be altered? Revisionism was the cornerstone of Hungary’s interwar foreign policy and some people were convinced, as was John F. Montgomery, U.S. ambassador in Budapest in the 1930s, that “the Hungarian people were not quite sane on that subject.” Well, it seems that some Hungarians are returning to the very same insanity that led Hungary nowhere except to another lost war, the loss of millions of its people, and a series of absolutely tragic events. But there are always people who are incapable of learning from past mistakes. Just like the Bourbons.

So, discussing Trianon endlessly and crying over Hungary’s misfortunes are dead ends. The Venice Commission’s opinion and the LIBE Commission recommendations, on the other hand, are of the utmost importance. The outcome of the investigations of the Hungarian government’s reshaping of Hungarian democracy into an authoritarian or even worse regime affects the very future of Hungarian democracy.

Let’s talk a little bit about the fate of Hungarian democracy. Some people are convinced that true democracy no longer exists in Hungary due to Viktor Orbán’s “renewal” of the country. I know that a lot of the readers of Hungarian Spectrum are certain that Viktor Orbán and his ilk will be running Hungary for the next twenty years. They are certain that Fidesz is unbeatable because the party communicates better, because all the state institutions are in party hands, and because the new electoral system is designed to keep them in power. By contrast, the opposition is fractured and lacks a charismatic leader. So why bother to do anything?

This defeatist attitude may be misplaced, especially since almost half of the electorate at the moment either doesn’t know or doesn’t divulge its political preferences. The various social groups that have been injured in one way or the other by the “renewal” measures of the Orbán government are numerous: civil servants, teachers, doctors, judges, university professors, artists, writers, and people receiving the minimum wage. One could go on and on. At the moment all these people are shaking in their boots, fearing for their jobs. They are afraid to go out to demonstrate. Surely, hidden cameras will reveal their identity. Fear has returned to the country.

But there might be a tipping point when all the grievances converge and serious opposition to the government breaks out. Who could have said on October 21, 1956 that in two days there would be an open rebellion against the Rákosi regime in Budapest? Or two weeks ago who would have thought that there would be street fights between young Turks and the police? Most likely nothing that drastic will happen in Hungary, but the possibility of a broad common front cannot be ruled out. Therefore, the opposition must be ready for such an occurrence. Moreover, the democratic parties have to come to some kind of an agreement concerning their attitudes toward “the accomplishments” of the Orbán government. Of course, I’m using the word “accomplishments” ironically.

What I mean is: can there be some kind of compromise between Fidesz and its democratic opposition? Because if not, says one school of thought on the subject, the present political division will only be perpetuated. Others are convinced that there is no way any kind of compromise is possible: Orbán’s autocratic rule cannot be “balanced” by those who believe in liberal democracy. Oil and water don’t mix.

Let me go back a bit to history and linguistics. I use the word “compromise” for “kiegyezés.” Indeed, when we talk about the historical “kiegyezés” of 1867 between Austria and Hungary in English we use the word “compromise.” The Compromise of 1867. However, the German word for the same event is “Ausgleich,” which means not so much compromise as “settlement.” Austria and Hungary settled their differences. So, according to a number of politicians, including Gordon Bajnai, the opposition must sit down with the politicians of Fidesz and settle their differences.

A settlement in the offing? 

Bajnai, in an interview with Die Zeit, envisages an electoral outcome in 2014 in which the united opposition achieves a modest victory which “would be an opportunity for a kind of national agreement for fair negotiations.” He wants “to cross party lines to reach a consensus” and has no intention of turning everything back to the pre-Orbán period. After watching Viktor Orbán up close and personal ever since 1998, I would like to see just one occasion when he was ready to come to a “national agreement.” We all remember when in 2002 Péter Medgyessy, then apparently on the advice of Ferenc Gyurcsány, tried to extend a hand to Viktor Orbán. He called this approach “filling the trenches” or “burying the hatchet” in English. He got nowhere. He was only rebuffed.

The latest attempt at “appeasement” (at least this is what I call it) on the part of Gordon Bajnai is asking for forgiveness for the referendum of 2004 when the Fidesz-supported idea of giving citizenship to Hungarian nationals living in the neighboring countries was rejected with the active support of the government parties. Since then the Orbán government’s super-majority voted for citizenship, which includes voting rights. Bajnai feels that this right cannot be revoked. Thus, the citizens of Hungary must live with perhaps a million extra votes of people who have no real stake in the outcome of the election and don’t have to bear its consequences. That is a very large number when only about four million people vote at national elections.

Bajnai, in the hope of extra votes from the other side, is giving in on many other issues as well. For example, he made special mention of the Day of Unity (in other words, the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Trianon) where he talked about three-fourths of the territories and two-thirds of its population Hungary lost. Of course, these numbers are correct, but failing to point out that the majority of this two-thirds were not Hungarians was a mistake. Talking about Trianon as a “tragedy” is again only adding oil to fire. He is hoping to come to an understanding on “the trauma of the Soviet occupation” and “the trauma of the Holocaust.” No wonder that the headline in HVG declared: “Bajnai compared Trianon to the Holocaust.” I don’t think that the loss of territories and the loss of lives can cause the same trauma. The last sentence of Bajnai’s communiqué stated that “we will have to close the period that meant the silence and abuse of Trianon.” That to me means that he promises the Hungarian nationalists that Trianon will remain a topic of debate. Keeping Trianon alive will also stoke the self-pity that is so injurious to the Hungarian psyche and that should be discouraged.

But that’s not all. Gordon Bajnai said the following about anti-Semitism and the Orbán government in Berlin the other day. “There are many problems with the government but one cannot claim that it has anything to do with antisemitism and racism.” One doesn’t have to go that far in seeking “national consensus” or “settlement” with Viktor Orbán and his followers. After all, Orbán’s attitude towards both is far from unequivocal.

That is the Bajnai approach, which in my opinion is utterly mistaken. Devoted Orbán followers will not vote for the democratic opposition because Bajnai supports the voting rights of Hungarians in the neighboring countries. It is also unlikely that a devoted supporter of Fidesz will be terribly impressed with  all that mea culpa on the issue of Trianon. But the voters of the democratic opposition may lose trust in him.

In the next few days I will outline some other ideas about what the opposition should do concerning the Orbán government and its supporters.

Hungarian nationals’ attacks on the LIBE draft report of Rui Tavares

Let’s hope that I will be able to tear you away from the historical discussion that has developed after my short note on the Hungarian situation in 1918-1919 and move on to the present.

I would like to turn to the draft report of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) on Hungary. It is a 30-page document that shows a thorough understanding of every aspect of Hungarian politics, relating specifically to constitutional issues, and recommends tough sanctions. But it is only a draft proposal to which amendments can be attached. The members of LIBE–fairly equally divided between the right and the left–will have to vote on the amendments one by one.

The proposed amendments were made public the other day: a total of 551 amendments taking up 134 pages. That is 134 pages of amendments to a 30-page document.  About two weeks ago I read somewhere that the Fidesz delegation itself submitted 200 amendments. The members of the Fidesz delegation were assisted by two other Hungarian members of the European People’s Party, Edit Bauer of Slovakia and Csaba Sógor of Romania. These two were almost as busy as Kinga Gál (Fidesz), who submitted at least 75 amendments. Another Fidesz MEP, Lívia Járóka, an ethnic Roma, was also active. László Surján and Ildikó Gáll-Pelcz also submitted minor amendments. I find it interesting that Hungarian nationals like Bauer or Sógor who don’t live in Hungary are so heavily involved with Hungarian domestic policies. I might add that Kinga Gál was born in Cluj/Kolozsvár, Romania.

The two most active EPP members, Kinga Gál and Edit Bauer / http://www.maszol.ro

The Hungarian group was greatly aided by Frank Engel, EPP MEP from Luxembourg, who at times was just as radical in his opposition to certain recommendations as were the Hungarian defenders of the Orbán government. Jean-Pierre Audy (France EPP) was also fairly active.

On the other side (the greens, the left front, the socialists, and the liberals) few people seemed to find fault with the draft document. Their amendments were minor and often aimed at clarifying or strengthening Tavares’s arguments. If the committee follows the suggestions of the Gál-Bauer-Sógor-Engel group, however, not much would remain of the original recommendations.

Here are a few examples. Frank Engel would delete recommendation 58 of the Tavares report, which reads:

Considers that the European Council cannot remain inactive in cases where one of the Member States is faced with changes that may negatively affect the rule of law in that country and therefore the rule of law in the European Union at large, in particular when mutual trust in the legal system and judicial cooperation may be put at risk.

Edit Bauer is perhaps the most radical because she would eliminate almost all the recommendations to the Hungarian Authorities. Here is one of the key sets of recommendations (section 61) of the LIBE draft report that the Fidesz supporters find especially odious. It’s long but nonetheless worth quoting in full.

Urges the Hungarian authorities to implement the following recommendations without any further delay, with a view to fully restoring the rule of law and its key requirements on the constitutional setting, the system of checks and balances and the independence of the  judiciary, as well as strong safeguards for fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, media and religion and the right to property:

On the Fundamental Law:

–        to fully restore the supremacy of the Fundamental Law by removing from it those provisions previously declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court;

–        to fully apply the recommendations of the Venice Commission and, in particular, to revise the list of policy areas requiring a qualified majority in line with the recommendations of the Venice Commission and with a view to ensuring future meaningful  elections;

–        to secure a lively parliamentary system which also respects opposition forces by allowing a reasonable time for a genuine debate between the majority and the opposition and for the participation of the wider public in the legislative procedure;

 On checks and balances:

–        to restore the right of the Constitutional Court to review all legislation without exception with a view to counterbalancing parliamentary and executive actions and ensuring, through full judicial review, that the Fundamental Law always remains the supreme law of the land;

–        to fully restore the prerogatives of the Constitutional Court as the supreme body of constitutional protection, and thus the primacy of the Fundamental Law, by removing from its text the limitations on the Constitutional Court’s power to review the constitutionality of any modifications of the Fundamental Law as well as the abolition of two decades of constitutional case-law;

 –        to restore the case-law of the Constitutional Court issued before the entry into force of the Fundamental Law, in particular in the field of fundamental rights;

–        to restore the prerogatives of the parliament in the budgetary field and thus secure the full democratic legitimacy of budgetary decisions by removing the restriction of parliamentary powers by the non-parliamentary Budget Council;

–        to provide clarifications on how the Hungarian authorities intend to remedy the premature termination of the term of office of senior officials with a view to securing the institutional independence of the data protection authority;

On the independence of the judiciary:

–        to fully restore and guarantee the independence of the judiciary by ensuring that the principles of irremovability and guaranteed term of office of judges, the rules governing the structure and composition of the governing bodies of the judiciary, as well as the safeguards on the independence of the Constitutional Court, are enshrined in the Fundamental Law;

–        to promptly and correctly implement the above-mentioned decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 6 November 2012 and of the Hungarian Constitutional Court, by enabling the dismissed judges who so wish to be reinstated in their previous positions, including those presiding judges whose original executive posts are no longer vacant;

–        to establish objective selection criteria, or to mandate the National Judicial Council to establish such criteria, with a view to ensuring that the rules on the transfer of cases respect the right to a fair trial and the principle of a lawful judge;

–        to implement the remaining recommendations laid down in the Venice Commission’s opinion No CDL-AD(2012)020 on the cardinal acts on the judiciary that were amended following the adoption of Opinion CDL-AD(2012)001;

On the media and pluralism:

–        to fulfil the commitment to further discuss cooperation activities at expert level on the more long-term perspective of the freedom of the media, building on the most important remaining recommendations of the 2012 legal expertise of the Council of Europe;

–        to ensure timely and close involvement of all relevant stakeholders, including media professionals, opposition parties and civil society, in any further review of this legislation, which regulates such a fundamental aspect of the functioning of a democratic society, and in the process of implementation;

–        to observe the positive obligation arising from European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence under Article 10 ECHR to protect freedom of expression as one of the preconditions for a functioning democracy;

–        to respect, guarantee, protect and promote the fundamental right to freedom of expression and information, as well as media freedom and pluralism, and to refrain from developing or supporting mechanisms that threaten media freedom and journalistic and editorial independence;

–        to make sure that legally binding procedures and mechanisms are in place for the selection and appointment of heads of public media, management boards, media councils and regulatory bodies, in line with the principles of independence, integrity, experience and professionalism, representation of the entire political and social spectrum, legal certainty and continuity;

–        to provide legal guarantees regarding full protection of the confidentiality of sources principle and to strictly apply European Court of Human Rights-related case-law;

–        to ensure that rules relating to political information throughout the audiovisual media sector guarantee fair access to different political competitors, opinions and viewpoints, in particular on the occasion of elections and referendums, allowing citizens to form their own opinions without undue influence from one dominant opinion-forming power;

On respect for fundamental rights:

–        to take positive action to ensure that the fundamental rights of all persons, including persons belonging to minorities, are respected;

On the freedom of religion and the recognition of churches:

–        to establish clear, neutral and impartial requirements and institutional procedures for the recognition of religious organisations as churches which respect the duty of the State to remain neutral and impartial in its relations with the various religions and beliefs and to provide effective means of redress in cases of non-recognition or lack of a decision in line with the constitutional requirements set out in the above-mentioned Decision 6/2013 of the Constitutional Court;

Very often Edit Bauer, Frank Engel, Csaba Sógor, and Kinga Gál want to delete exactly the same passages from the draft report. Since I suspect that these four worked together, the repetitions are not the results of an oversight. Rather they most likely want to emphasize four times over how unacceptable these recommendations are. Engel, for example, wants to get rid of  “to restore the right of the Constitutional Court to review all legislation without exception with a view to counterbalancing parliamentary and executive actions and ensuring, through full judicial review, that the Fundamental Law always remains the supreme law of the land.” He also wants to get rid of the passage “to restore the case-law of the Constitutional Court issued before the entry into force of the Fundamental Law, in particular in the field of fundamental rights.”  Edith Bauer wants to remove the passage “to implement the remaining recommendations laid down in the Venice Commission’s opinion … on the cardinal acts on the judiciary that were amended following the adoption of Opinion CDL-AD(2012)001.”

These amendments will be discussed in the LIBE Committee on Thursday, after which Tavares will try to come up with a compromise text. Then, most likely on the 19th, the members of the committee will vote. The revised report will come before the plenary session of the full European Parliament, probably in July.

Report of the Venice Commission on the Hungarian Constitution: End of the dance of the peacock?

On March 12 the Hungarian parliament, despite protestations,  passed the fourth amendment to the less than one-year-old Hungarian constitution. The amendment itself was fifteen pages long and incorporated all the objectionable laws that had earlier been part of the temporary provisions. By incorporating them into the constitution proper, the Hungarian government through its super-majority in parliament prevented the Constitutional Court from studying their constitutionality. Earlier the Constitutional Court had found some of these provisions unconstitutional.

When the Hungarian parliament was considering passage of the fourth amendment, prominent EU politicians such as Thorbjørn Jagland, secretary general of the Council of Europe, and José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, asked them not to move ahead. Angela Merkel personally warned János Áder, who happened to be on a state visit in Berlin, of the possible serious consequences if he signs this amendment to the constitution into law. Yet Áder went ahead and in a speech to the nation tried to justify his action by claiming that he had no other choice. His hands were tied by law. Some people, including former President László Sólyom, earlier chief justice of the Hungarian Constitutional Court, thought otherwise.

Viktor Orbán himself dismissed the criticism that the changes his government had made to the constitution were anti-democratic. “Who is able to present even one single point of evidence, facts may I say, that would be the basis for any argument that what we are doing is against democracy? Just one concrete step,” he told reporters ahead of a summit of  EU leaders in Brussels.

Well, it seems that the five constitutional scholars who were in charge of examining the provisions of the fourth amendment had plenty of evidence to prove that it is “against democracy.” I doubt that Viktor Orbán is as cocky today, after the Venice Commission’s report was mistakenly uploaded to its website ahead of schedule, as he was a day or two after the storm in mid-March. Apparently he told the Fidesz-KDNP parliamentary delegation at that time that “the more they attack us the better.” This time around it seems that these “attacks” will indeed have very serious consequences. Every European organization that is involved with the Hungarian constitutional crisis–the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, and the European Commission–had been waiting for word from the Venice Commission.

The handwriting was already on the wall in mid-April when the members of the Venice Commission visited Budapest and were handed a fifty-page reply to their criticisms. Róbert Répássy, undersecretary in the Ministry of Administration and Justice, sensed that “the members of the Venice Commission had already made up their minds.” I’m sure they had. After all, these five legal scholars had been studying the new Hungarian constitution as well as its amendments for over a year.

At this point, János Martonyi, most likely on instruction from above, asked three conservative legal scholars to take a look at the constitution and its amendments. The government was hoping for an endorsement of its position, but even their report, which arrived in early May, was not an unequivocal seal of approval.

I have only the summary of the report that  Népszava published last night. The original is 34 pages long and is apparently a complete condemnation of the Hungarian constitution as it now stands. (The report was taken off the site once the timing error was discovered.) The members of the Commission (the Austrian Christoph Grabenwarter, the German Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem, the Polish Hanna Suchocka, the Finnish Kaarlo Tuori, and the Belgian Jan Velaers) consider the fourth amendment no more than a “political declaration” that “aims at the perpetuation of the political power of the current government.” The document itself has seven chapters and the objections are summarized in 155 points. Without trying to go into details on the basis of a summary, I’ll skip straight to the Commission’s final verdict. The Commission, unlike in other cases, doesn’t even bother to make suggestions that would perhaps remedy some of their objections. Rather, they indicate that the whole thing is unacceptable. It has to be abrogated. Thrown out.

The limits imposed on the Constitutional Court “have a negative influence on the Council of Europe’s three fundamental pillars: the separation of powers, the defense of human rights, and the rule of law…. The Hungarian constitution cannot be a political instrument…. The fourth amendment perpetuates the problems of the judiciary independence, severely undermines the possibilities of constitutional scrutiny, and endangers the constitutional system of checks and balances.”

Even Gergely Gulyás, Fidesz’s young star and expert on the constitution, admitted that this was a much worse outcome than he himself had anticipated. Naturally, he pointed out all the alleged inaccuracies and wrong interpretations, but I had the impression listening to his interview this afternoon that even he realizes that the Hungarian government doesn’t have a leg to stand on. The government will answer, but I doubt that they are too sanguine about being able to change the mind of the Venice Commission.

And a lot depends on the opinion of the Venice Commission. In the Council of Europe, the members have been waiting for the opinion of the legal experts before they hold a vote on imposing a monitoring procedure against Hungary. The European Parliament will soon vote on the LIBE recommendations.  The Venice Commission’s opinion might sway some members who hitherto have been undecided on the merits of Rui Tavares’s report. And there is the European Commission, whose decision on a new infringement procedure as a result of the fourth amendment has been in limbo, pending word from the Venice Commission. And finally, the legal opinion on the Hungarian political situation as embodied in the new Orbán constitution might tip the scale against Fidesz in the European People’s Party where until now the majority supported Viktor Orbán. After the release of this document it will be difficult if not impossible to stand by a man who uses his power for the perpetuation of his own rule while trampling on the most sacred tenets of democracy.

Viktor Orbán most likely knew a couple of months ago that this is what would happen. He said in one of his speeches that a new attack is under way and that by June Hungary will be the target of an international assault. I guess he has been preparing for the battle. But this battle will be very difficult to win. His opponents are numerous and strong. And the god of democracy is on their side.