Four months were not enough for the Hungarian parliament to vote on Sweden and Finland joining NATO. Although Viktor Orban’s government has shown it can move legislation quickly when it wants to, he announced last week that the vote will only take place at the parliament’s first meeting next year.
This article was originally published by EURACTIV’s media partner Telex.
Although the Polish prime minister urged Hungary to quickly ratify the two countries’ accession to NATO, Orbán did not give in – and he even added that, in his opinion, the two had not lost a minute because of Hungary.
It’s been months since Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó submitted the bills on the Finnish and Swedish applications for joining NATO to Parliament in July, but the issue still hasn’t been put on the agenda.
The Hungarian government has previously said that there was a “good chance” that they would vote on the issue in this year’s session, and in September, Parliament confirmed to Telex in writing that this would be done during the autumn session.
When we asked the government again in November, the state secretary for foreign affairs replied that the ball was in Parliament’s court, the government had done its job and couldn’t rush the National Assembly, which has “very important issues” on its table all autumn.
As Parliamentary State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Levente Magyar told Telex, “the House has been working at full steam all autumn”.
But then, four months after the proposal was tabled, Orbán publicly announced that the issue would be postponed until next year.
The majority of the 30 member states of the military alliance ratified the two countries’ applications for membership in July and August, leaving only Turkey and Hungary without ratification.
Minister Gergely Gulyás has claimed that Budapest is not using this to put pressure on the European Commission over the €7.5 billion (HUF 3,000 billion) of EU funding being withheld from Hungary.
The government and the National Assembly do not always sit on a proposal for so long. It has become clear in recent years that if the Hungarian government wants to pass a law, it can get it through parliament rather quickly.
Some things only took days or weeks
The tax law reform, for example, was pushed through Parliament in less than two days this July. The proposal was tabled on Monday, debated for a few hours on Tuesday under a special procedure and voted on the very same day.
Although President Katalin Novák “sensed” the outrage of society, she was unaffected by the intense protests- she signed the law a few days later.
In this way, the government effectively executed the simplified small business tax known as “KATA”. Due to the changes, of the previously 400, 000 entrepreneurs who paid their taxes this way, from September, more than 300, 000 were forced to either switch to another tax bracket or give up their jobs entirely.
It took just three weeks to pass the pedophile-turned-anti-LGBTQ law.
The leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group, Máté Kocsis, submitted the proposal on tightening the laws on paedophilia at the end of May 2021. In June, however, a few new sections were added to it, for example, prohibiting the promotion and presentation of homosexuality and gender reassignment to persons under the age of eighteen.
Five days later – despite thousands of people protesting – the governing majority, together with far-right Jobbik, voted in favour of the law, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called a disgrace and 15 EU countries condemned in a joint statement.
János Áder, who was president at the time, found nothing wrong with it and signed it into law quickly.
In the meantime, the European Commission refused to approve the Hungarian recovery plan, and the rule of law report was published, containing serious criticism: corrupt elites, worrying legislation procedures, and media situation.
It was also announced that the EU would start infringement proceedings against Hungary for violating the fundamental rights of gays and lesbians.
Then in June this year, at a rapid pace, just ten days after the bill was tabled, Parliament urgently voted to almost double Viktor Orbán’s salary.
Until then, the prime minister was one of the lowest-paid members of the government, and his asset declaration showed no savings.
As prime minister, he had been receiving a gross salary of €3,700 (HUF 1.5 million) which was increased to €8,500 (HUF 3.5 million) gross. On top of this, he receives a basic monthly salary of 1.3 million forints gross as an MP. This change brought his total income from €6,900 (HUF 2.8 million) to €11,800 (HUF 4.8 million).
How public funds were transferred to foundations
Parliament also only needed a few weeks to make the transfer of public funds into foundations possible.
The law, adopted last April, placed 70% of Hungarian higher education institutions under a foundation, and the state gave away thousands of billions of forints’ worth of public property to these organisations without any compensation.
The foundations are run by appointees delegated by Fidesz. A trust equipped with hundreds of billions of forints in assets was also established.
The essence of the foundation setup is that the public assets that the government gives them are no longer considered public funds in the classic sense, and most of the rules governing the operation of these foundations can only be changed by a two-thirds majority. Fidesz Vice President Lajos Kósa explained the whole point in a very clear way:
“It is all very simple. I am a private person, my money is mine. This is true until the moment I put it in the foundation. From then on I have no right to it, no connection to it, no interest in that money. I am cut off from it. That is the essence of a foundation. That money ceases to be mine.”
“The point of the foundation is that I put the money in, and from then on, the previous ownership of that money ceases completely. In the same way, it’s public money until the founder has put the money in the foundation, and from then on, it’s the money of the foundation and not public funds.”
The National Assembly also passed the amendment to the Social Law very quickly, within barely a month.
According to this law, the state would only help the needy as a last resort, once the family and the local government had already failed to do so;
The so-called Lex CEU, which made the operation of the Central European University in Budapest impossible, was decided on just as quickly.
The same is true for the overtime law, which allows the employer to increase the number of overtime hours from 250 to 300 a year, or even 400, by collective agreement.
Solid as granite – but not quite
Hungary’s new Fundamental Law was adopted by Parliament in 2011. Its text was written by József Szájer, former Fidesz MEP, and Minister Gergely Gulyás. On the occasion, Orbán said the Fundamental Law was “as solid as granite”. It has since been amended eleven times, usually a month after an amendment was tabled.
This happened three times recently. Most recently in July this year, the Parliament voted to amend it, in this case, to make it possible to hold the European Parliament and local elections on the same day. According to Fidesz, this will save €22 – 24.5 million (HUF 9-10 billion).
Just two months earlier, in May, the Fundamental Law was amended for the tenth time, to include a state of danger due to war.
Orbán explained this by saying that there is a war going on next to Hungary, a war “which no one can see the end of yet”, and that this is why he believes it must be ensured that the government has room for manoeuvre and the ability to act immediately.
The state of danger is about governing by decree: it gives the government the power to override existing laws.
The Fundamental Law was amended for the ninth time in December 2021. It was then that the definition of public funds was changed and the phrase “the mother is a woman, the father is a man” was added.
In all, the last few years have shown that if the government really wants to, it can push proposals through parliament within days or, at most, weeks.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]
Source: euractiv.com
