EU leaders took momentous selections final week in Brussels as they agreed to open EU membership talks with Ukraine. For weeks Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban had threatened to dam the prospect, along with the deliberate €50bn in assist to Ukraine as a part of the evaluation of the EU finances.
On the doorstep to the landmark EU summit on 14 December, Orban claimed Ukraine had not delivered anticipated reforms.
He insists that EU membership is merit-based — which certainly it needs to be — however his personal authorities has bluntly flouted the norms and values upon which the EU is based.
Underneath his management, Hungarian authorities routinely assault and undermine the rule of regulation and democratic establishments.
The federal government claims extraordinary powers to rule by decree and sidestep parliamentary course of by perpetual extensions of ”states of hazard”.
Impartial journalists, media and civil society organisations face smear campaigns by public officers and pro-government media. Discrimination and vilification of lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) folks and Roma persist, as do illegal pushbacks of migrants and asylum seekers.
The EU has been proper to step in together with via the EU Courtroom of Justice, European Parliament scrutiny, Fee infringement proceedings, monetary conditionality and its major treaty instrument to deal with critical breaches to the rule of regulation — the article 7 process of the Treaty on European Union (TEU).
However the EU’s actions have to date had restricted outcomes.
Impartial observers agree that whereas Hungary’s authorities has adopted some measures in response to EU necessities, these fall quick of what’s wanted to alleviate considerations over the rule of regulation in Hungary.
Because the summit painfully illustrated, EU leaders have additionally did not include Orban’s potential to hijack EU international coverage.
In Might 2023 in an effort to acquire suspended EU funds, the Hungarian parliament handed a regulation addressing some points with the independence of the judiciary. However the regulation failed to ensure the integrity of the parliamentary lawmaking course of and the independence of key judicial our bodies, amongst different points.
Hungarian civil society has criticized the federal government’s final ditch efforts in early December to make additional amendments to satisfy EU benchmarks.
As an alternative of holding the road, the EU has as soon as once more did not successfully maintain Hungary to account.
On the day earlier than the landmark summit, the European Fee concluded that Hungary had met situations linked to judicial independence and unblocked €10bn of EU cohesion funds. It maintained a freeze on €21bn in different funds linked to Hungarian authorities’ persistent breaches of rule of regulation and human rights norms.
Horse-trading
The timing of this step on the eve of essential European Council selections on Ukraine that Hungary opposed raises many questions, together with of political horse-trading.
Whereas EU member states have continued to scrutinise Hungary underneath article 7, they’ve prevented placing to a vote whether or not Hungary’s actions breached EU values or to undertake respective suggestions to treatment these breaches.
The article 7 process is a singular and important software for the EU to guard its treaties and functioning as a group of like-minded states. If taken to its final conclusion it might entail suspension of sure membership rights, together with voting rights.
But, member states have shirked their accountability to undertake any concrete, even preventive, measures underneath the instrument, limiting their motion to political dialogue for the reason that process was launched in 2018.
On 14 December EU leaders succeeded in greenlighting EU membership talks for Ukraine paving the best way for complete reform of Ukraine’s human rights, institutional, and rule of regulation framework according to EU acquis. EU accession has supplied essentially the most highly effective car for reform and democratization on the European continent.
However except the EU is agency on rule of regulation at dwelling and EU member states assume the accountability of their mandate to carry Hungary to account with quick motion underneath article 7 on the Council, Viktor Orban wouldn’t solely destroy democracy in Hungary and undermine the EU as a union of values — he would derail the reform potential of enlargement for Ukraine and different candidate international locations too.
Underneath present unanimity guidelines, Hungary might politicize and use for its personal functions each subsequent stage of enlargement, together with fundamental steps corresponding to opening and shutting of acquis chapters.
Orban certainly vowed instantly after the summit to do precisely that. This could have a deeply demoralising impact on Ukraine’s dedication to ship on the EU reform agenda and undermine the EU’s credibility earlier than all candidate international locations.
Along with being an argument for the way wider utility of Certified Majority Voting might help human rights and democratic reforms, that is one other case for why the EU can not proceed to tolerate the present Hungarian authorities’s excesses at dwelling and overseas.
Orban acquiesced on accession talks, however Hungary did block the substantial bundle of assist to Ukraine, maintaining a lever in reserve to dilute scrutiny and impede EU international coverage.
The EU shouldn’t enable the reform potential of its enlargement coverage to be held hostage by the chief of a single member state, who refuses to respect the very foundational values of the EU.