Political group leaders representing over 70% of the European Parliament have urged the European Commission to deny Hungary’s request for any more EU recovery funds in the latest front in the battle between EU lawmakers and Viktor Orbán’s government.
In a joint letter on Monday (24 April) by all the political groups apart from the European Conservatives and Reformists, MEPs urged the EU executive to block funds for Budapest.
“In our view, it clearly makes it impossible to give a positive assessment of the first payment request under the Recovery and Resilience Plan,” the letter concludes.
The letter was signed by the centre-right European People’s Party, the Socialist and Democrat group, the liberal Renew Europe, the Greens and the Left.
Ministers in Budapest hope to access up to €20 billion in post-COVID recovery funds amid a lengthy, ongoing dispute with Brussels over the rule of law, democratic freedoms and non-discrimination.
The dispute has also prompted Hungarian lawmakers to delay votes approving the accession of Finland and Sweden to the NATO alliance and financial aid to Ukraine.
Poland and Hungary, both of whom have been embroiled in prolonged legal disputes with the EU, have been the EU states slowest to access the loans and grants earmarked to boost their economies under the bloc’s €750 billion recovery resilience fund.
However, in their letter, MEPs point to a series of recently adopted domestic laws in Hungary that, they say, will contribute to “the deterioration of the rule of law, fundamental rights and democracy.”
In particular, they point to the draft education bill, known as the Status Law, which “would drastically restrict the fundamental rights of the teachers, their freedom of expression, exceedingly decrease their professional autonomy and drastically curtail their labour rights including their right to strike.”
“It could, among others, limit them in expressing, both within and outside of the workplace, opinions that are critical of the incumbent Government’s certain ideological convictions,” the letter states.
MEPs also pointed to draft legislation, passed by Hungarian MPs but blocked by President Katalin Novák, that would allow citizens to anonymously report activities going against the Hungarian way of life and the Fundamental Law, including activities violating the “constitutionally recognised role of marriage and the family”.
Novák told Hungarian lawmakers that the bill “does not strengthen but rather weakens the protection of fundamental values.” The veto could still be overruled, but it is rare for the president to defy the government so openly.
In March, 15 EU governments joined the European Commission’s lawsuit against Hungary over amendments to a domestic child protection bill that would introduce a ban on minors’ access to any content that “propagates or portrays divergence from self-identity corresponding to sex at birth, sex change or homosexuality.”
The Commission should “use all tools at your disposal as soon as possible,” the letter adds.
Hungarian ministers say they have worked to address the Commission’s concerns with new provisions on judicial independence and anti-corruption reforms.
[Edited by Alice Taylor]
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Source: euractiv.com
