It is possible that this case could end up in court, said the EP group's Vice President Kinga Gál.Continue reading
Long gone are the days of soul-searching and defensive statements or protests from government officials complaining of bias after the European Commission’s annual rule-of-law reports. Should we celebrate this development? Perhaps not, as this is a clear sign that the European Union’s institutions have lost their authority and credibility to such an extent, that they are now deemed trivial, inconsequential. And that is no cause for celebration.
This week the European Parliament has opted for its to-date most blatant revolt against the will of some 20 million European voters by excluding the third largest bloc, Patriots for Europe, from all leadership post and working groups. Zero post for the third largest political alliance thanks to European People Party (EPP) leader Manfred Weber’s anti-democratic deal with Europe’s far-left and progressive forces. This is a clear violation of the so called d’Hondt method used in proportional representation systems, proudly published on the EP’s own website. “This proportional distribution of leadership positions within Parliament prevents the dominance of political life by just one or two large political groups, ensuring that smaller political groups also have a say in setting the political agenda”, says the explanation. This is apparently an alternative to the ‘winner-takes-all’ strategy.
The @Europarl_EN has made its choice: #EU oligarchy instead of #European #democracy. PS: And managed to override its own rules on balance between women and men as well. pic.twitter.com/PwISsXxAi8
— Bóka János (@JanosBoka_HU) July 23, 2024
Needless to say, the Parliament had just sold its own rules down the river without even trying to explain why they put a political ‘cordon sanitaire’ around Europe’s conservatives and sovereigntists. Instead, they had abdicated that task to the European Commission that only a day later, on July 24, had published its 2024 Rule of Law Report. The report is a near copy-paste of opinions supplied by mostly US funded NGOs, that did not fail in delivering on the expectations of their sponsors. Hungary in particular is ostracized for allegedly making no progress towards the independence of the judiciary, alleged bias of the public broadcaster or, more worryingly, in granting free access to ‘independent’ NGOs providing sexual education to children. The report also complains about the tax on groups facilitating illegal migration, about the National Sovereignty Act and, astonishingly, about the lack of media pluralism.
The report, that in previous years was hailed by the Hungarian opposition political landscape and media as the insurmountable proof of what they call ‘democratic backsliding’, has barely been given attention even in the opposition press, apart from the mandatory negative extracts. Perhaps even they found it too embarrassing to republish the passages concerning the lack of media pluralism in a country, where over 60% of the press are anti-government, and where the scandal of foreign financing of the left-wing media by sources close to U.S. oligarch George Soros’ Open Society Foundations has made recent headlines. In view of this week’s assault against political pluralism in the European Parliament though, the Commission’s report has become borderline embarrassing.
The report’s near-complete absolution of Poland after the election win and aggressive take-over of the country’s institutions by the left’s Donald Tusk, and concern’s about Slovakia’s democracy where Robert Fico’s national-sovereigntists have voiced some skepticism about arming Ukraine and tried to remedy the public media’s entirely radical leftist bias, made the report, above all, beyond predictable. While criticizing the Hungarian public broadcaster’s, no doubt tangible, national-conservative leaning as contrary to the principle of media pluralism, while for years ignoring the fact that in neighboring Slovakia, the public broadcaster, alongside almost the entire private media landscape had served as a de facto private communications channel of the hard-left Progressive Slovakia party, shows that reports made by the Commission are entirely based on political-ideological criteria. Just like the distribution of positions in the European Parliament.
The European institutions have been created to facilitate free trade and to put the decisions of sovereign nations into practice for the common good. They have instead established themselves as self-appointed arbiters over the democratic will of European voters, engaging in social engineering and political manipulation. They have built a ‘cordon sanitaire‘ around views and solutions that they deem as a threat to their power just when new ideas and approached are needed to remedy the all-to-obvious failures of the past decade. Failures in illegal migration, in climate and energy policy, on the war in Ukraine, gender politics and so on. This is a danger in view of Western Europe’s crumbling societies that are descending into lawlessness with an ever accelerating speed. If the voice of national and conservative forces is not allowed to be heard in the European political discourse, the continent may well slide deeper into division and political violence orchestrated by an unaccountable bureaucracy with incurable autocratic tendencies.
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