By vetoing the EU's recovery financing, Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński are putting at risk the lives of all Europeans threatened by a needlessly prolongued Covid-19 crisis, as well as the livelihood of everyone whose job or business is harmed as a result, only because they want the EU to continue to fund their increasingly corrupt power grab. We must not let them.
Luckily, the EU Treaties provide other options. We need to call their bluff and we need to do it now.
Financing the recovery through enhanced cooperation of the 25 other member states is the way to do it.
Read moe at:
We need to call Orbán's bluff by going ahead without him
Showing posts with label Orban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orban. Show all posts
11/22/20
11/18/20
Hungary says it blocked EU budget over migration 'blackmail' - "which is total nonsense by Orban who destroyed Democracy in his country" said a European parliamentarian
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Wednesday his country vetoed the EU's budget over plans to tie funding to respect for the rule of law, as it amounted to "blackmailing" countries that oppose migration.
Read more at: Hungary says it blocked EU budget over migration 'blackmail'
Read more at: Hungary says it blocked EU budget over migration 'blackmail'
4/1/20
Eastern Europe-Coronavirus creating dictatorships?: Hungary's Orban, Serbia's Vucic seize greater authority amid coronavirus lockdowns
In ex-communist Eastern Europe and elsewhere, populist leaders are introducing harsh measures including uncontrolled cellphone surveillance of their citizens and lengthy jail sentences for those who flout lockdown decrees.
Read more at:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hungary-serbia-coronavirus-authority-1.5515846
Read more at:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hungary-serbia-coronavirus-authority-1.5515846
3/1/19
EU Parliamentary Elections: Hungary's Orban faces threat of exclusion from European Centre-Right Partners
Hungary's Orban faces threat of exclusion from European centre-right partners
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seeing growing opposition from partner centre-right parties in the European Parliament, a revolt that has the potential to impact upon May’s elections.
Read more at:
http://www.france24.com/en/20190301-hungary-orban-european-epp-immigration-elections-juncker-eu
Read more at:
http://www.france24.com/en/20190301-hungary-orban-european-epp-immigration-elections-juncker-eu
9/19/18
EU Politics: Why Macron’s ‘Third Way’ Is EU’s Best Option - by John Lloyd
The largest question in democratic politics in Europe is: who’s in charge?
The issue was illuminated in the latest standoff in the European Parliament, where the body voted on Wednesday to sanction Hungary for its illiberal policies. And in Sweden, where the far-right did well enough in last Sunday’s election to ensure that its borders are tightened. And in Britain, where a preliminary accord on Brexit now seems nearer.
The ideals of a more united European Union demand clarity. A decision has to be made on whether or not a European federation, erasing sovereignty in participating nations, is desired, and by whom.
It had seemed easy before our times. Treaties – of Augsburg in 1555 and of Westphalia in 1648, arrived at after years of carnage – groped towards a principle that nation states were the natural order of international relations. The treaties didn’t stop wars or dismantle all empires, nor did they usher in an era of religious tolerance. But they meant that countries which could claim the allegiance of citizens within defined borders were the basic unit of power.
Who was in charge? Clearly the ruler – increasingly, as time went by, put in place by the will of the people. The older states, like Britain and France, were experienced in this. The newer creations, as Germany and Italy in the latter half of the 19th century, strove to catch up. In the 20th century, anti-imperialist momentum, promoted most of all by the United States, rolled on and created many new nations. Nation-statism became the prevailing world order.
But the greater carnage of World War Two and Nazism impelled a few thinkers and activists in devastated Europe to see nationalism not as a prophylactic against war, but as a prime cause of it. Economic interdependence and slow but steady integration of governments would take the place of the “balance of power” among states which had so clearly failed.
Power would no longer be precariously balanced, but unified in one pacific entity: a federal Europe, dedicated to peace, with contiguous nations joining on condition they observed the rules of the club: cooperation, democracy, equality, freedom of speech, the market and the press and respect for civil society. The values of Western liberalism, incarnate in a new kind of governing power – which had renounced the old kind of power.
However, a club has rules, borders which cannot be breached. Hungary, a member since 2004, was this week judged to have crossed them. A report by a Green Party member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, Judith Sargentini, found that the Hungarian administration, led by the increasingly authoritarian Viktor Orban, had comprehensively violated the independence of the judiciary, the press and the academy, and had become massively corrupt. As a result, the parliament voted – for the first time in its history – to sanction Hungary by depriving it of voting rights in the EU’s Council of Ministers.
Orban, denouncing the move as one cooked up before the debate, was wholly defiant, saying that Hungary “will not accede to this blackmail.” It was, he said, an attack on the Hungarian state and people by countries that had allowed floods of migrants to enter Europe, and were trying to force Hungary to do the same.
Orban sees himself as upholding true Christian values, bearing the flame of a militant Christianity gone flabby in West European hands, and indifferent to, even encouraging of, an invasion of Europe by mainly Muslim immigrants. He will continue, and confidently – since the parliament’s vote to censure must be approved by the leaders of the 28 member states (including a still-Brexiting Britain), and there he has allies, above all in Poland and Italy, who can vote to veto it.
The Hungarian standoff has illuminated, cruelly but necessarily, the issue of authority.
The question is also one put before the Union by Emmanuel Macron, the leader most clearly opposed to the nationalist-populists. In pressing for a more robust advance to closer European integration, only the French president has put the issue squarely: who’s for federation? And who isn’t?
Macron’s fellow leaders had voted for a euro currency which was as much a mechanism for greater integration as a new means of exchange, agreeing to “ever closer Union” – while at the same time recoiling from a more strongly integrated banking and financial order which, the German governing center-right parties and the northern nations fear, would mean more irresponsibility from the southern countries.
Orban counts on these divisions. He sees the present strengthening of the nationalists, understands the reluctance of the Union to do more than make declarations, and meanwhile bides his time.
Macron, who has forced the pace and the need for a decision, has, however, also provided a third way between integration and the exit chosen by the United Kingdom. He has proposed a Europe of concentric circles, with an integrating core and increasingly weak adhesion to the Union in those states locating themselves in the spaces further from the center.
This is the way that should be taken: one which accommodates those countries that see the Union as an embryo state, and those which see it as a free trade arrangement with better inter-state cooperation on selected issues. Were it adopted, it would liberate the EU from its self-created dilemma – how to get the Union closer where many of the members wish to remain at a distance. They wish to do so because they wish to retain national sovereignty – as, it seems, the people who vote for them do. The nation state makes clear who is in charge; the European Union has deferred the issue to a future ideal state.
Orban grasps that one large truth, and has erected his semi-authoritarian rule upon it. Meanwhile, the Brits have chosen. The Hungarians, Poles and Italians have moved into the hostile camp. Others wish to remain ambiguous. But the time for ambiguity is running out.
Read more: Why Macron’s ‘Third Way’ Is EU’s Best Option • Social Europe
The issue was illuminated in the latest standoff in the European Parliament, where the body voted on Wednesday to sanction Hungary for its illiberal policies. And in Sweden, where the far-right did well enough in last Sunday’s election to ensure that its borders are tightened. And in Britain, where a preliminary accord on Brexit now seems nearer.
The ideals of a more united European Union demand clarity. A decision has to be made on whether or not a European federation, erasing sovereignty in participating nations, is desired, and by whom.
It had seemed easy before our times. Treaties – of Augsburg in 1555 and of Westphalia in 1648, arrived at after years of carnage – groped towards a principle that nation states were the natural order of international relations. The treaties didn’t stop wars or dismantle all empires, nor did they usher in an era of religious tolerance. But they meant that countries which could claim the allegiance of citizens within defined borders were the basic unit of power.
Who was in charge? Clearly the ruler – increasingly, as time went by, put in place by the will of the people. The older states, like Britain and France, were experienced in this. The newer creations, as Germany and Italy in the latter half of the 19th century, strove to catch up. In the 20th century, anti-imperialist momentum, promoted most of all by the United States, rolled on and created many new nations. Nation-statism became the prevailing world order.
But the greater carnage of World War Two and Nazism impelled a few thinkers and activists in devastated Europe to see nationalism not as a prophylactic against war, but as a prime cause of it. Economic interdependence and slow but steady integration of governments would take the place of the “balance of power” among states which had so clearly failed.
Power would no longer be precariously balanced, but unified in one pacific entity: a federal Europe, dedicated to peace, with contiguous nations joining on condition they observed the rules of the club: cooperation, democracy, equality, freedom of speech, the market and the press and respect for civil society. The values of Western liberalism, incarnate in a new kind of governing power – which had renounced the old kind of power.
However, a club has rules, borders which cannot be breached. Hungary, a member since 2004, was this week judged to have crossed them. A report by a Green Party member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, Judith Sargentini, found that the Hungarian administration, led by the increasingly authoritarian Viktor Orban, had comprehensively violated the independence of the judiciary, the press and the academy, and had become massively corrupt. As a result, the parliament voted – for the first time in its history – to sanction Hungary by depriving it of voting rights in the EU’s Council of Ministers.
Orban, denouncing the move as one cooked up before the debate, was wholly defiant, saying that Hungary “will not accede to this blackmail.” It was, he said, an attack on the Hungarian state and people by countries that had allowed floods of migrants to enter Europe, and were trying to force Hungary to do the same.
Orban sees himself as upholding true Christian values, bearing the flame of a militant Christianity gone flabby in West European hands, and indifferent to, even encouraging of, an invasion of Europe by mainly Muslim immigrants. He will continue, and confidently – since the parliament’s vote to censure must be approved by the leaders of the 28 member states (including a still-Brexiting Britain), and there he has allies, above all in Poland and Italy, who can vote to veto it.
The Hungarian standoff has illuminated, cruelly but necessarily, the issue of authority.
The question is also one put before the Union by Emmanuel Macron, the leader most clearly opposed to the nationalist-populists. In pressing for a more robust advance to closer European integration, only the French president has put the issue squarely: who’s for federation? And who isn’t?
Macron’s fellow leaders had voted for a euro currency which was as much a mechanism for greater integration as a new means of exchange, agreeing to “ever closer Union” – while at the same time recoiling from a more strongly integrated banking and financial order which, the German governing center-right parties and the northern nations fear, would mean more irresponsibility from the southern countries.
Orban counts on these divisions. He sees the present strengthening of the nationalists, understands the reluctance of the Union to do more than make declarations, and meanwhile bides his time.
Macron, who has forced the pace and the need for a decision, has, however, also provided a third way between integration and the exit chosen by the United Kingdom. He has proposed a Europe of concentric circles, with an integrating core and increasingly weak adhesion to the Union in those states locating themselves in the spaces further from the center.
This is the way that should be taken: one which accommodates those countries that see the Union as an embryo state, and those which see it as a free trade arrangement with better inter-state cooperation on selected issues. Were it adopted, it would liberate the EU from its self-created dilemma – how to get the Union closer where many of the members wish to remain at a distance. They wish to do so because they wish to retain national sovereignty – as, it seems, the people who vote for them do. The nation state makes clear who is in charge; the European Union has deferred the issue to a future ideal state.
Orban grasps that one large truth, and has erected his semi-authoritarian rule upon it. Meanwhile, the Brits have chosen. The Hungarians, Poles and Italians have moved into the hostile camp. Others wish to remain ambiguous. But the time for ambiguity is running out.
Read more: Why Macron’s ‘Third Way’ Is EU’s Best Option • Social Europe
2/23/15
Hungary: Orban loses ‘supermajority’ in Hungary parliament
A by-election in Hungary has dealt a blow to Prime Minister Viktor Orban who’s faced accusations of being power hungry.
His governing Fidesz party has lost its three-quarters parliamentary majority after an independent candidate secured a win of the Vezprem county constituency.
Attila Magyar, our correspondent in Budapest explained what the by-election win meant:
“This result is mainly symbolic. Still, only a few people expected that an opposition candidate could win. A year ago a similar election saw the ruling right wing party take a 20 percent lead in this county.”
Zoltan Kesz won support from several opposition parties to allow him to run – including the Socialists.He’s vowed to be a true critic of the government.
Read more : Orban loses "supermajority" in Hungary parliament
His governing Fidesz party has lost its three-quarters parliamentary majority after an independent candidate secured a win of the Vezprem county constituency.
Attila Magyar, our correspondent in Budapest explained what the by-election win meant:
“This result is mainly symbolic. Still, only a few people expected that an opposition candidate could win. A year ago a similar election saw the ruling right wing party take a 20 percent lead in this county.”
Zoltan Kesz won support from several opposition parties to allow him to run – including the Socialists.He’s vowed to be a true critic of the government.
Read more : Orban loses "supermajority" in Hungary parliament
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