A member of Germany’s liberal FDP party, Renata Alt, who is also head of the committee on Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia, has called for a number of punitive measures to be introduced against Hungary for what she perceives to be the deterioration of the rule of law. The Slovakian born German MP, who has a long history of exceptionally offensive and partisan views on the conservative government of Viktor Orbán, has spoken to the Hungarian news portal Index about her frustration regarding the fact that none of the past disciplinary proceedings initiated by European Union’s institutions have led to real economic sanctions that would have hurt the current government.
Alt, an MP for the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), was one of those politicians, who had called Hungary a dictatorship for introducing a state of emergency during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, she is now leading a pre-election campaign in Germany under similar emergency laws introduced by the government of Angela Merkel due to the pandemic situation.
Alt had acknowledged the fact that the Central-Eastern European country has become an essential trading partner, and manufacturing hub for German industry, but when asked by the reporter whether this could be exploited by the Berlin government to interfere with Hungarian politics, she insisted that the German leadership has no such intentions, and political and industrial relations should be distinguished.
Yet, she immediately contradicted herself by saying: “German companies cannot watch the deterioration of the rule of law with arms crossed, they need to give unequivocal signs towards the Hungarian government.”
This opinion gives a hint as to what can one expect from a government occupied by activist politicians such as Alt. If the most recent polls should materialize during the September elections to the Bundestag, Alt’s FDP have a good chance of becoming a part of a progressive-leftist government. They will not only turn Germany into an experimental lab for a wide range of Marxist and environmental utopian ideas, but will do their best to destabilize the entire region and exert pressure on those opposed to their ideology.
If they manage to turn Germany industry into an instrument of German politics as they did with the institutions of the European Union, they will either accelerate the disintegration of the EU, or could succeed in forming a Berlin-dominated European super-state.
The latter, however, can only materialize if the now standing conservative governments will be replaced by the left, and if they manage to destroy smaller regional alliances such as the Visegrád Four (V4), which is a political and economic alliance between Czechia, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. Alt seems to be well aware of the importance of the V4, as during an interview with the Political Capital publication, which is funded by George Soros and the Bertelsmann Foundation, she praised the efforts of Slovakia’s progressive president, Zuzana Čaputová, to disassociate herself from the idea of the V4, saying, “if Slovakia tried to detach itself from the Visegrád Group, it would only be in its favor.”
It is astounding how such an open and unashamed political interference in the affairs of democratic countries has become the new normal, where the new European radical left reserve themselves the right to overrule voters in determining who can or cannot lead European nations. They do not shy away from using taxpayer-funded European Recovery Funds for political blackmail either, as Renata Alt has confirmed in the interview saying that there are EU-based mechanisms for stopping the Hungarian government, such as the Article 7 proceedings, which can now, according to her admission, be used to punish disobedient governments even without the permission of the European Council. She has promised that she will urge the next German government to introduce economic sanctions against countries that they accuse of transgressing against their definition of European fundamental values.
She concludes her interview by quoting the now ubiquitous mantra, according to which “European fundamental values cannot be disputed”. In every society or community, the values that hold it together, form the basis of a democratic discourse. In fact, this is what allows these values to develop and to conform to the needs of any society. Whenever a small group of political elites usurp themselves the right to define and interpret them, and are intolerant of rival approaches, democracy starts a rapid decline into authoritarianism.
