Fidesz MEP: 'Brussels waging political cold war against Poland'
Justice minister: Hungary backs Polish top court ruling highlighting EU’s ‘problematic practices’
In a statement she published on Facebook ahead of a meeting of EU affairs ministers in Luxembourg, Varga said Brussels had “stepped on the gas” and “blackmailed” Hungary and Poland because “we think differently about the world and Europe”.
She said Brussels opposed Hungary and Poland’s pro-family policies, their rejection of immigration and their push for “a strong Europe of strong nations instead of an empire”.
“We are and will remain members of this club,” Varga said. “This club has rules that have long been laid down in the Treaties. However, it is Brussels, not us, that wants to break these principles, and to do so by force.”
Varga said that in addition to publishing reports on the state of the rule of law in Hungary and Poland and launching infringement procedures against them, the EU was also “blackmailing” the two countries by withholding funds from them that they were entitled to.
“While we’re being hounded over the Child Protection Act, Poland is being attacked for blocking the EU’s stealthy transfer of powers,” the minister said. “We’re used to the pressure, Budapest and Warsaw are standing firm, shoulder to shoulder.”
Varga said she agreed with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who said in a letter addressed to EU leaders on Monday that “the principle of the primacy of EU law is not unlimited, but only applies in areas that fall within EU competence”. Powers that have not been transferred to the EU by member states must remain with member states, she cited Morawiecki as saying.
“So it is not Hungary and Poland that are breaking the rules of the club, but the Brussels bureaucracy, with these underhand and ideologically biased political games!” Varga said.
Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal said in a judgement earlier this month that the Polish constitution had supremacy over EU law in matters in which the bloc had no power.
Fidesz MEP: ‘Brussels waging political cold war against Poland’
The European Commission is “waging a political cold war” against Poland instead of fulfilling its duties as guardian of the EU Treaties, Tamas Deutsch, the head of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz’s group in the European Parliament, told Hungarian public media in the interval of an EP plenary debate about a recent legislation in Poland, on Tuesday. At the session, a debate was held about a decision under which Poland’s constitutional court declared primacy of the Polish Constitution over EU laws.
Addressing the debate, Deutsch said that “launching a cold war was yet another, the fourth, step in a series of attacks that had begun with activating the EU’s Article 7 procedure against Hungary and Poland on the basis of false information and trumped-up charges”. “The EU is threatening these two countries with suspending their voting right in the European Council,” he said.
Deutsch said that after the Article 7 procedure, the next step in the series of attacks had been “forcing through” the rule of law criteria which Brussels used “as a tool of political blackmail for the suspension of allocations in EU development funding to a member state that had not met its expectations”.
The third step for the European Commission was to postpone in an irregular way the allocation in coronavirus pandemic related recovery funding to Poland and Hungary which the two member states are otherwise entitled to receive, the Fidesz MEP said.
“In these attacks, the EC has had the European Parliament, the European Left and the European People’s Party as cooperating partners,” Deutsch said.
