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Victory of Putin ally Orban in Hungary may trigger freeze on EU funding
Link to tweet
Vladimir Putin has congratulated Hungary’s strongman leader, Viktor Orbán, on his decisive election victory, amid signs that European Union authorities will launch a sanctions process against Budapest that is intended to safeguard EU funds at risk from democratic-backsliding member states.
Two members of the European parliament said they expected the European Commission to launch the “rule of law conditionality mechanism” against Hungary, a legal process that could ultimately switch off billions in EU payments to Budapest. EU countries that have government-controlled courts and captured state institutions can be deprived of EU funds, but the law has never been tested.
At the European parliament in Brussels on Monday, MEPs expressed shock at Orbán’s victory speech, where he hit out at “opponents”, including a characteristic dig at “Brussels bureaucrats”, but also Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The swaggering speech came just hours after the western world reacted in horror to the atrocities at Bucha and other towns near Kyiv…EU leaders were conspicuously silent on a day when independent election observers at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported that the Hungarian vote was “marred by the absence of a level playing field”.
…Petri Sarvamaa, a centre-right Finnish MEP, said, based on his understanding, the commission was going to trigger the process within days, but added that Hungary posed far deeper questions. Europe could be approaching a historic moment, he said. “We are facing existential issues. These are totalitarian authoritarian regimes vis-a-vis the democratic world and Orbán seems to be willing to be part of that [first] camp.”
“We appeased Viktor Orbán … and we, the union, appeased Vladimir Putin. And if we continue on this path.. We will find ourselves obsolete.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/04/victory-of-putin-ally-orban-in-hungary-may-trigger-freeze-on-eu-funding
Two members of the European parliament said they expected the European Commission to launch the “rule of law conditionality mechanism” against Hungary, a legal process that could ultimately switch off billions in EU payments to Budapest. EU countries that have government-controlled courts and captured state institutions can be deprived of EU funds, but the law has never been tested.
At the European parliament in Brussels on Monday, MEPs expressed shock at Orbán’s victory speech, where he hit out at “opponents”, including a characteristic dig at “Brussels bureaucrats”, but also Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The swaggering speech came just hours after the western world reacted in horror to the atrocities at Bucha and other towns near Kyiv…EU leaders were conspicuously silent on a day when independent election observers at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported that the Hungarian vote was “marred by the absence of a level playing field”.
…Petri Sarvamaa, a centre-right Finnish MEP, said, based on his understanding, the commission was going to trigger the process within days, but added that Hungary posed far deeper questions. Europe could be approaching a historic moment, he said. “We are facing existential issues. These are totalitarian authoritarian regimes vis-a-vis the democratic world and Orbán seems to be willing to be part of that [first] camp.”
“We appeased Viktor Orbán … and we, the union, appeased Vladimir Putin. And if we continue on this path.. We will find ourselves obsolete.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/04/victory-of-putin-ally-orban-in-hungary-may-trigger-freeze-on-eu-funding
