Progressives within the European Parliament are trying to derail the European Commission’s release of €10.2 billion of Hungary’s cohesion funding by appealing to the EU’s Court of Justice, in an attempt to reignite Brussels’ ‘rule-of-law’ battle against the country’s conservative Fidesz government.
MEPs on the Parliament’s notoriously left-leaning legal affairs committee voted 16-1 Monday to sue the Commission over the decision to release the funds last December—a vote denounced by critics as a political attack disguised in legal “nonsense.”
Hungary has undergone near-constant harassment from Eurocrats with trumped-up accusations of ‘rule-of-law’ violations in the country’s judiciary system and media.
Representatives of the European Commission and MEPs will appear before the Court sometime inMarch. Green MEP Daniel Freund claimed in comments to Politico Tuesday that the “Commission has contradicted itself on whether Hungary is respecting the rule of law.”
Fidesz MEP Ernő Schaller-Baross reacted to the attempts from MEPs to force the EU to go back on its word in a scathing comment to The European Conservative, saying,
In legal terms, what the European Parliament is doing is nonsense, as it is nothing more than turning to the European Court of Justice to enforce its own political demands without regard to legal limits.
Maltese President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola will meet with MEPs Thursday to decide on the next stages of the court case. The EPP is expected to join the leftist groups in taking the Commission to court over its decision to release the EU money owed to Hungary.
The Parliament’s court case against the Commission has been long on the cards. MEPs passed a strongly worded resolution on concessions to Budapest in January, even floating the prospect of Hungary losing its voting rights on foreign policy matters.
Responding to liberal claims that they had ‘grown soft’ on Hungary, the European Commission declared that “Hungary had submitted all evidence the Commission had required to show the independence of its judiciary” and that “the Commission therefore was under a legal obligation to adopt this decision.” In a statement to The European Conservative, the Commission reiterated that Budapest was compliant with its rule-of-law standards.
The European Court of Justice is the highest court when it comes to the application of EU law, with Eurocrats previously referring Hungary to it regarding the country’s pro-family policies.
