The European Commission’s implementation of the bloc’s rule of law mechanism is biased against member states with conservative governments, Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga has claimed.
Speaking after a meeting of EU justice ministers on Tuesday, Varga told reporters “the findings of the European Commission’s country-specific rule of law reports are characterized by a double standard for Hungary and Poland.”
Judit Varga revealed that the relevant ministers had held a country-specific discussion over the framework of the so-called annual dialogue on the rule of law and reviewed the practical application of the rule of law in several Member States, including Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria, Luxembourg and Malta. The head of the ministry emphasized that there was no legal response to Hungary’s concern about the double standard in the reports.
According to Varga, this confirmed Hungary’s concern that the European Commission’s (EC) rule of law report was not forward-looking, as it deepened the trenches between member states.
“Countries with a national conservative government can never be good students,” Varga said, adding that Hungary expects the European Commission to recognize that Hungarian legislation meets European expectations.
The Hungarian justice minister emphasized that in the parliamentary elections in Hungary, the national conservative government, which had been in power for 12 years, had won a new mandate.
“54 percent of voters said they did not share the European Commission’s concerns about Hungary. Hungarian voters still want to move in the right direction, they want national sovereignty, the protection of their identity and the preservation of all the possibilities for self-determination that the EU treaties empowered the country for,” she pointed out.
The justice minister also stated that in the acute situation caused by the war in Ukraine, the focus should be on what connects the EU member states, and not on what deepens the trenches between them. They should talk to each other in the name of unity, solidarity and openness, not stigmatize each other, she underlined.
In connection with the fact that the European Commission announced last week that it would launch proceedings against Hungary under the so-called conditionality mechanism linked to the rule of law, which blocked the disbursement of EU funds, Judit Varga said: “the decision to launch the mechanism has not yet been taken, according to the rules and regulations of the EU committee, only at the end of April, so the communication preceded the action.”
