RULE OF LAW : MEPS DETAIL THEIR CRITICISMS ABOUT HUNGARY'S GOVERNMENT.

PositionMember of the European Parliament

Same old tune from Viktor Orban's Conservative Hungarian government: MEPs' criticisms are without value because they are "political" - coming from the left, the Liberals and the Greens. And yet there is no shortage of criticism, as evidenced by the report by the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), which was voted in, on 19 June in Brussels, by elected representatives, including those hailing from the right (31 voices in favour, 19 against).

And so it is that Budapest has been addressed 40 recommendations. If the Hungarian government does not apply them, the next step would be applying Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty - the EU's "nuclear weapon". If the Orban government continues to trample EU values (democracy, rule of law, freedom, equality and respect of human rights and the rights of minorities), the LIBE committee calls on the presidents of the EP's political groups to activate Article 7, which would deprive Budapest of its right to vote in the Council of Ministers.

With the Hungarian government using and abusing its two-thirds majority in parliament - thanks to its party, Fidesz (right) - since its victory in 2010 to change the laws and constitution of the country, MEPs urged it to withdraw from the constitution provisions that had previously been rejected by Hungary's Constitutional Court.

For example, a very restricted definition of "family" (a married couple with children), a shrunken status for churches, and the possibility of criminalising homeless persons. Further, the Constitutional Court should recover the possibility of referring back to the old constitution (pre-2012), whereby it would regain full power on cases. What is more, MEPs stressed that the judges who were unceremoniously dispatched into early retirement must be reinstated (as requested by the EU Court of Justice, but Budapest claims that most do not want to be reinstated).

"The actions of Orban's government seriously weakened the democratic system of the balance of powers," said Portuguese Greens MEP Rui Tavares (the rapporteur, who has been working on the dossier for over a year). "Systematically resorting to cardinal laws (which require a two-thirds...

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