If you missed it live, watch the full footage of our event here:
The attacks by EU institutions against the conservative governments of Hungary and Poland under the pretext of ‘rule-of-law violations’—and the unwillingness to act against the Spanish socialist leadership’s actual violations—were at the heart of the debate titled ‘Rule of Flaw: The EU’s Legal Hypocrisy,’ organised by The European Conservative on Tuesday, January 23rd.
The ruling party in power in Hungary since 2010, Fidesz has been repeatedly condemned by the leftist institutions of the European Union for not adhering to ‘EU values’ to the point that they have frozen EU funds for Hungary out of political spite and suspended the participation of Hungarian students in the Erasmus educational exchange programme.
“The rule of law is connected with democracy, and Hungary and Poland are democratic countries. But if you go to the European Parliament, they have a different vocabulary, the term ‘rule-of-law’ becomes an ideological expression, a political expression, easily used to condemn nations,” former Hungarian Minister of Justice and current MEP for Fidesz László Trócsányi told the audience. As he pointed out, Hungary has been heavily criticised for a lot of things but without evidence, because the European Parliament is not interested in the evidence.
Trócsányi emphasised that the EU Treaties’ objective of establishing “an ever closer Union among the peoples of Europe” has led the EU into risky territory, because it is hard to establish where the boundaries are between national sovereignty and EU law, allowing EU institutions to meddle in domestic affairs.
“When we speak about the redistribution of refugees in Europe, the Hungarian government says it is their responsibility to decide who enters the country. On the one hand the Hungarian judges have to respect the national constitution; on the other hand there is the EU regulation. This creates a problem,” Trócsányi said, referring to the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact which would force member states to accept asylum seekers or pay a fine. Hungary has rejected the pact. “It’s not that our laws are violating EU norms, but the EU regulations are going against our existing constitution with every new decision. Where is the limit of the ‘ever-closer union?’ With no limit, there can be no constitutional identity either,” Trócsányi said, adding that Hungary doesn’t want to create a European superstate: “we would like to maintain our freedom.”
The problems of the ‘ever-closer union’ concept came to light in 2021 when the Polish constitutional court questioned the primacy of EU law over the Polish constitution, angering EU institutions. Another panellist in Tuesday’s debate, Polish sociologist and MEP for the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party Zdzisław Krasnodębski said that the Brussels-led attacks on PiS during its time in government between 2015 and 2023 were politically biased, and had nothing to do with the law—“the behaviour of our colleagues in the European Parliament shows us this very clearly.” As he pointed out, prior to the resolutions brought against Poland, there was never any serious discussion of any actual “violations” that Poland was supposed to have committed; rather, they were political attacks by the liberal majority of the Parliament against a sovereigntist government.
Then in December, the left-liberal government of Donald Tusk came to power in Poland and instantly caused a stir with its aggressive takeover of the public broadcaster and the arrest of two of its political rivals in what seems to be a sign of rising authoritarianism. Yet, unsurprisingly, EU institutions have not raised any concerns about rule-of-law violations.
“As soon as the new government came into power, suddenly the ‘rule of law’ was not that important,” Zdzisław Krasnodębski complained. As he explained, Tusk and the leftists in Europe blackened the image of Poland during the PiS-era, in order to justify the establishment of a totally arbitrary political power that the EU elite would accept because it is “pro-European.” Tusk said after his election victory that PiS’s “occupation” of Poland had ended. In other words, MPE Krasnodębski said, “all the elections PiS won were not ‘democratic decisions,’ all the actions taken by the government, all the reforms are ‘invalid.’ It means we have no right to participate in public life.”
In contrast to the EU’s treatment of Hungary and Poland under PiS, Spain’s socialist government has been given a virtual ‘free pass’ by Brussels, despite actual rule-of-law violations. Brussels correspondent for the Spanish conservative publication El Debate Javier Villamor explained that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has broken Spanish law to facilitate a political pact with Catalan separatists in a bid to stay in power.
Because the socialist government in Spain has controlled the law through appointing judges, Villamor said, that there is no separation of powers in Spain; no checks and balances.
“They control the constitutional court thanks to promoting leftist judges from the very beginning. They control the unions, the state security forces. Now they are implementing the amnesty law, meaning all the crimes committed since 2012 by convicted politicians in Catalonia will simply be erased,” he said.
The panel ended where it began: Eurocrats have no interest in an honest discussion about what ‘rule of law’ means. Rather, they will just continue using it as a tool to force sovereigntist governments to cede power to Brussels.
