The European Parliament again took up the rule of law and emergency measures in Hungary to deal with the coronavirus on Thursday 14 May, when the Hungarian government announced at the same time that it could start easing some of the special measures taken in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, including giving full powers to Viktor Orbán, at the end of June, according to Reuters.
During this one-hour debate, the Vice-President for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourova, pointed out that at this stage, the Commission’s analysis did not yet make it possible “to open an infringement proceeding” against Budapest, but the Commission is continuing to assess the impact of these measures on Community law.
At present, it is focusing its attention more particularly on measures relating to labour law and the European data protection regulation. Ms Jourova said that some decisions taken in these two areas under emergency laws needed to be looked at very closely.
For the rest, the Vice-President confided that she was being advised on a “daily basis” of all developments in the country. “I know everything that is going on”, she told MEPs, citing a recent arrest of a Hungarian citizen for criticising the government on Facebook or the case of a journalist in trouble because he had given the wrong number of available beds.
On means of action, the Vice-President said she was confident that work on the Article 7 procedure in the EU Council would resume as soon as possible, but also told MEPs that a tool such as the European budget conditionality was probably the most effective.
Conditioning the budget is the best answer
“It caused quite a stir when I came up with this idea in 2017”, the Vice-President recalled. She personally had in fact raised the idea of cross-compliance (see EUROPE 11895/7), and the Vice-President maintained on Wednesday that it was still “the right thing to do”.
She was echoed by some MEPs, some of them, like Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Veld (Renew Europe), who said that “we should no longer give a penny” of taxpayers’ money to finance the decline of democracy and the rule of law in the country.
In any case, the Vice-President told MEPs that the Commission was now waiting for Member States to gradually lift their restrictive measures and that these phases of return to normality would also be closely scrutinised by the institution.
For this debate, the Hungarian Minister of Justice, Judit Varga, had wished to take part, but Parliament President David Sassoli said that only the Prime Minister could intercede, which he declined to do, as he was too busy with Covid-19, he said.
However, the government was represented by the EPP’s interlocutor, Fidesz politician Andor Deli, who criticised the obsession of “left-wing and centre groups” with organising “sterile debates” on his country.
A ‘Renew Europe’ plan for the rule of law in the EU
The Renew Europe group, for its part, has published a 10-point plan to restore the rule of law in the EU generally. In particular, the plan insists on “the rule of law conditionality” and direct management by the Commission of “EU funds dedicated to the recovery plan [...] whenever a given Member State is subject to an Article 7 TEU procedure and/or when the government in office is responsible for severe violations of EU fundamental values”. (See the Plan: https://bit.ly/2T1IjCn )
New informal General Affairs Council on 26 May
The issue of the rule of law will return to the agenda of the European Affairs Ministers on 26 May in another informal video conference, the Croatian EU Council Presidency has informed EUROPE. At this stage, it will be an information point for the Commission on its future annual report on the rule of law to be published in September. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)