"The 2022 election campaign is already under way in Brussels," Judit Varga said, calling LIBE a "political body".Continue reading
Reservations made in terms of Hungary in 2018 mostly persist, the head of a fact-finding delegation of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) said on Friday.
Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, of the Greens-European Free Alliance group, told a press conference that some of the people the delegation met during its three-day visit to Hungary said that certain aspects of the rule of law had deteriorated in the country over the recent period. The pieces of information collected in Hungary, however, have to be assessed in detail and incorporated into a report to be submitted for a vote by the EP, she said. The report will become the EP’s own once the body has approved it, she added.
The members of the LIBE delegation held consultations with over a hundred people, and heard many opinions and political views, Delbos-Corfield said.
She said that all seven groups of the EP were represented in the delegation in order to guarantee diversity in line with EP regulations.
Delbos-Corfield said that the visit had been planned since 2019 but postponed last spring because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In response to a question, she said the main areas of review included the independence of the judiciary, media diversity, the enforcement of fundamental rights, freedom of education and the proper operation of parliament. During the visit, the delegation met representatives of the judiciary, media, civil organisations, science, culture and opposition parties, the mayor of Budapest, as well as the ministers of justice and the interior, she said.
featured image: Delbos-Corfield at the press conference; via Zoltán Máthé/MTI