Once again, liberal MEPs are threatening legal action against the European Commission in order to punish conservative governments, Fidesz MEP Tamás Deutsch told daily Magyar Hírlap, adding that the left wants to make the European Parliament a “political police”.
A group of MEPs want to take legal action against the European Commission (EC) for failing to enforce the so-called rule-of-law mechanism against Hungary and Poland, which also involves the withdrawal of EU funds, according to a draft resolution that came into the possession of Politico.
The Brussels paper recalled that in an earlier document, MEPs had set June 1 as the deadline, but the European Commission is awaiting a ruling by the European Court of Justice, in line with a decision by member state leaders last December. MEPs who support the current proposal say they should move forward.
The draft was backed by Social Democrat S&D, Liberal Renew, the Greens, and the far-left GUE/NGL, but has not yet been signed by the European People’s Party (EPP) by the time the article was published. It is unclear if the EPP will eventually support the proposal.
The draft will be signed by Hungarian opposition party Momentum’s representative Katalin Cseh on behalf of Renew, and among the signatories there are politicians who criticize Hungary frequently, such as the German Green Party Daniel Freund and Terry Reintke, and the Social Democrat Birgit Sippel.
The European left — with the help of the Hungarian left’s representatives — wants to turn the European Parliament into a type of political police, Tamás Deutsch, the head of the Fidesz European Parliament delegation, said in reply to a question from Magyar Hirlap about the draft resolution. He recalled that their ambition to use their majority to punish conservative governments was not new, but that it was growing stronger: the Tavares report, the Sargentini report and the so-called rule of law mechanism also served this purpose.
According to Deutsch, the European left does not want to argue with those who take a different position, be it an EU institution, a government of a member state, a party family, or a political group, but simply wants to punish those who hold different opinions via legal action. Deutsch said that those who say no to illegal migration, imperial, federal ideas, and gender sanity are branded Euroskeptic, extremist, corrupt. The left is now seeking ever harsher punishments for those whole fall outside the liberal orthodoxy that pervades in Brussels.
The Fidesz politician pointed out that this behavior threatens democracy and thus the freedom of the people.
“We will act as resolutely as possible against anti-democratic aspirations, we will protect the freedom of the Hungarian and European people,” Deutsch emphasized, recalling that “we Europeans experienced during the brown and red dictatorships that the consequence of sanctioning disagreement is a mass disenfranchisement”.
According to the politician, the European left not only hates political forces that represent a different opinion, but also voters who support them of their own free will, speaking in an unworthy way of tens and hundreds of millions of Europeans. The Hungarian left is at the forefront of this behavior, he stated.
According to Deutsch, the left-wing majority of the European Parliament is greatly offended by the fact that the body of heads of state and government, the European Council, has prevented the rule-of-law mechanism from condemning member states for ideological differences. He emphasized that the European Commission was acting in accordance with the law when awaiting a ruling from the ECJ, rather than judging individual member states politically as expected by the left-wing majority in the European Parliament.
He called it “sad” that Fidesz’s former party family, the European People’s Party, had given in to pressure and “became a servant of the left”, aiding left-wing efforts to transform the European Parliament into a political police force.
Title image: Fidesz MEP Tamás Deutsch. (source: European Parliament)
