Brussels, 12/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 12 April, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, once again decided to call upon the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, to provide further explanations regarding the recent amendments made to that country's constitution. It was hardly surprising that President Barroso expressed his “serious doubt” regarding the fourth amendment. Initial legal analysis of the amendments raises serious questions regarding the compatibility of the fourth amendment with EU legislation and with the principle of the rule of law, he writes, calling on the Hungarian authorities to answer those questions as soon as possible, failing which the Commission will consider initiating further infringement proceedings.
Barroso states: “I strongly appeal to you and to your government to address these concerns and to tackle them in a determined and unambiguous way. This is without doubt in the best interest of Hungary and of the EU as a whole”. Among other problems, Barroso evokes the powers conferred upon the president of the national office for the judiciary for transferring cases and, subject to a more detailed analysis, the restrictions on publication of political advertisements. It is also a matter of payment obligations arising from the judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU, the Commission's press release states. The Council of Europe and its Venice Commission are also involved in the analysis and will give a preliminary opinion on these amendments on 15 and 16 June. The European Parliament, for its part, will this week include the Hungarian situation on its agenda, planning to vote on a report on the state of the country in June. The Commission and Hungary have been at loggerheads for over two years now regarding the soundness of Hungarian democracy, and the United States has also expressed concern. Nonetheless, the situation does not seem to have improved. The Commission has already opened proceedings against Budapest on media law, the law on the retirement age of judges, the data protection authority and the independence of the central bank. Early March, four EU foreign ministers from Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark called upon the Commission in a joint letter to work on a mechanism of sanctions for countries that drift away from European democratic standards - this being implicitly targeted at Budapest. (SP/transl.jl)