[ad_1]
Ironically, the resignation of a Hungarian MEP was necessary after being caught fleeing a party described by his organizer as a gay orgy to highlight the growth of anti-liberalism in Europe.
Jozsef Szajer apologized for breaking Covid-19 restrictions by attending the gathering of approximately two dozen men, saying that the drugs found by police belonged to someone else.
The incident likely would have remained a gossip topic in the Brussels bubble and a national story in Hungary if it weren’t for the details of the man’s career.
Szajer, a staunch ally of right-wing nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, drafted Hungary’s famous new constitution on his iPad, a reactionary document that promised to protect “the institution of marriage between a man and a woman” and “the family as the basis of the survival of the nation ”.
The constitution became the basis for laws that erode LGBT freedoms and was the background for a culture war crusade against anything identified as “too gay,” with goals ranging from a children’s book to an advertisement. from Coca Cola to Eurovision.
Sheer hypocrisy turned what could have been a minor political scandal into an international story, which has put the spotlight on Hungary at a time when it is in conflict with the EU.
In recent weeks, Hungary and its ally Poland have mounted a last-minute lockdown on the bloc’s € 1.85 trillion budget and historic recovery fund, risking an abrupt halt in funding for EU programs from January and a deepening of the economic recession caused by the pandemic.
If no agreement is reached, only permanent financing systems, such as payments to farmers and international aid, could continue, and in a reduced form. Money for the Covid-19 response, Erasmus exchanges, climate change grants, infrastructure projects, and Horizon research, among others, would abruptly run out.
Rule of law
Budapest and Warsaw acted in protest against the new conditionality of the EU’s rule of law: a proposed change under which funds can only be delivered to countries that respect the democratic values of the EU. The governments of Hungary and Poland, both accused of democratic backsliding and interfering with the independence of the judiciary, suspected a trap.
The fact that this confrontation has been postponed until this time of drastic risks is a reflection of the myopia of the main powers of the EU and of great naivety.
In hindsight, something like rule-of-law conditionality for funding should have been in place a long time ago, and was agreed upon when anti-democratic forces were weakest. But in the 1990s and 2000s, EU builders were too convinced of the unstoppable march of progress to consider what might happen if a member state became a dictatorship, with EU money used to maintain the power.
When Hungary joined the bloc in 2004, the center-right parties in Europe viewed Orban as a golden boy: a charismatic anti-Soviet activist turned reformist.
Her Fidesz party’s membership within the European People’s Party gave her access to leaders like France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel and their networks, along with their lengthy leniency and apparent sanction, at a time when the right-wing group had so many heads of state dominated EU decision-making.
Heart of power
The lure of that force in numbers kept Fidesz at the heart of EU power, and Orban was pleased long after his illiberal turn emerged a decade ago. The shifting fortunes of the European right – populists and extremists increasingly outnumbering traditional centrists and shifting the EPP’s center of gravity eastward – made it increasingly difficult to confront it. Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who embarrassed Europe by congratulating Donald Trump after the US elections while criticizing the vote count and “mainstream media” for indicating the result was going the other way, vowed to split the PPE if it decides expel Fidesz from their ranks.
But the fact that the EU’s economic stability is now at stake, and the twist of fate that exposed Orban’s point man in Brussels at this critical moment, have combined to create a sense that Fidesz has become too costly. politically to ignore it.
As if tasting blood in the water, a group of 30 EPP MEPs, including the five Fine Gaelers, published a letter calling for the expulsion of the head of the Hungarian delegation, Tamás Deutsch, for comparing the conditionality of the rule of law with the Nazi and the Soviet. oppression. At the same time, the European Commission laid out how the 25 EU states that support the recovery fund could go ahead with it, without Poland and Hungary.
Fine Gael passed up the opportunity to join 13 of his PPE colleagues in calling for Fidesz’s expulsion earlier this year. They may have another chance soon.
