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Today Europe acted to hold the Hungarian government to the constitutional values that it eagerly endorsed when it joined the European Union nearly a decade ago.

The action came in the form of the Tavares Report which sailed through the European Parliament with many votes to spare.  The report provides a bill of particulars against the Fidesz government and lays out a strong program to guide European Union institutions in bringing Hungary back into the European fold.   With the passage of this report, Europe has finally said no to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his constitutional revolution.

Rui Tavares

The Tavares Report is by far the strongest and most consequential official condemnation of the Fidesz consolidation of power over the last three years.  And it creates a strong set of tools for European institutions to use in defending the long-term prospects for Hungarian democracy.

The report passed with a surprisingly strong vote:   370 in favor, 248 against and 82 abstentions.   In a Parliament split almost evenly between left and right, this tally gave the lie to the Hungarian government’s claim that the report was merely a conspiracy of the left.  With about 50 of the 754 MEPs absent, the total number of yes votes was still larger than the total number of MEPs of all of the left parties combined.   In short, even if all MEPs had been present, the left alone still couldn’t account for all of those votes.   And since the 82 abstentions had the effect of allowing the report to go forward, they should be read as soft “yeses” rather than undecided or negative votes.

Hungarian Spectrum

The Hungarian authorities must remedy any breaches of key EU values swiftly, said MEPs on Wednesday 3 July. If they fail to do so Parliament’s leaders should consider asking the Council of the EU to determine, under EU Treaty Article 7.1, whether there is a clear risk of a serious breach, MEPs say. They also want a high-level group to monitor compliance with the EU’s values in all member states.

In the resolution, adopted by 370 votes to 249, with 82 abstentions, Parliament stresses that the EU is founded on key values such as respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law, as enshrined in Article 2 of the EU Treaty.

“Constitutional changes in Hungary have been systemic and they have a general trend that moves away from EU values enshrined in EU Treaty Article 2,” said Portuguese Green MEP Rui Tavares, who wrote the resolution, in the debate on Tuesday. “Democracy is about the rule of the majority, but not about majoritarianism,” he added.

Parliament regrets that the process of drafting and adopting Hungary’s constitution “lacked the transparency, openness, inclusiveness and, ultimately, the consensual basis that could be expected in a modern democratic constituent process” and deplores the fact that the institutional changes “resulted in a clear weakening of the system of checks and balances”.

European Parliament

spent almost three hours watching the debate in the European Parliament on the Tavares report. We discussed this report at length at the time of its passage in the LIBE Commission of the European Parliament. In addition, I published Rui Tavares’s letter to the Hungarian people both in English and in Hungarian. So, the readers of Hungarian Spectrum are aware that the report is a thoroughly researched document that in many ways echoes the findings of the independent judges of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.

I found two good summaries of the debate, both in Hungarian. One appeared in Népszabadság and the other on the new Internet website called 444! But it is one thing to read a summary and another to see the debate live. Just to watch Viktor Orbán’s face was itself educational. Sometimes he looked vaguely amused, but most of the time his smile was sardonic. Who can forget that disdainful expression on Orbán’s face when one of his critics, Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the liberals in the European parliament and former prime minister of Belgium, mentioned the name of  György Konrád, “the great Hungarian writer”? And when he heard something he didn’t like, Orbán raised his eyebrows and shook his head in disbelief. He considered all criticism utterly baseless and, through body language and facial expressions, made no secret of it. It’s too bad that most of the people in the chamber didn’t see all that since Orbán sat in the front row.

HungarianSpectrum

BRUSSELS — Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban clashed Tuesday with his critics in the European Union’s parliament over his government’s perceived democratic failings.

On the eve of a vote on a critical report on the way his parliamentary majority runs Hungary, Orban came over especially from Budapest to the legislature in Strasbourg, France, to defend his policies and to urge the EU not to meddle in Hungary’s internal affairs.

WashingtonPost