Hungarian Politics

[Sheilbh]

Bit of a nuclear option from Rutte in the Dutch Parliament saying the ultimate choice on rule of law could be to "re-establish the EU without Hungary and Poland". He also called for the European Parliament to increase the pressure because Hungary and Poland veto measures against the other member state at the Council level, interestingly apparently Cyprus are currently vetoing any EU level response on Belarus.

It seems a pretty big deal, even though the Dutch have been particularly annoyed with the lack of "punishment" for Hungary and Poland for a while. Having said that it feels like there's a pretty fundamental design flaw if it is easier to entirely re-found the EU without certain members than take action against them

[Syt]

[Tamas]

Told ya.

[The Brain]

As usual Sweden is lagging.

[Tamas]

A government/Fidesz related "legal consultancy" have been doing a weird, quite Erdogan-esque "influencing" campaign, where they published an uplitfing video about Hungarian history on www.keszuljetek.hu which translates to "be ready/prepare", and then from who knows what funding they have been having stills from that short movie as newspaper and poster ads all over the place:





"Justice, strength, ascension"



"Fight, nation, independence".

[The Brain]

"Man, camera, TV"?

[Agelastus]

"Strength" in Hungarian is "Ero"?

[Valmy]

The fact that the two times Hungary became a free nation it made Horthy and Orban its leaders kind of undermines the patriotic message there.

[Tamas]

"Strength" in Hungarian is "Ero"?

Yes but it is probably pronounced differently than you think Here it is pronounced: https://youtu.be/KXtpmZmTBVs?t=10

[Duque de Bragança]

Pronounced [erö], so no big deal. 

[The Larch]

The ECJ has ruled Hungary's law regulationg higher education (the one used against Central European University, the one funded by Soros) to go against EU law.

ECJ rules against Hungary's higher education law
The European Court of Justice has ruled that a law on foreign universities operating in Hungary breaches EU law. The measure forced a Budapest university founded by US-Hungarian billionaire George Soros to move abroad.

The EU's top court on Tuesday ruled that a Hungarian law that forced the relocation of Central European University (CEU) out of the country was not in line with EU law.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled against Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government, saying "the conditions introduced by Hungary to enable foreign higher education institutions to carry out their activities in its territory are incompatible with EU law."

Part of the law required foreign universities operating in Hungary to strike a bilateral agreement between the country's nationalist government and the universities' country of origin, and also to offer teaching services in its home country.

Orban vs. Soros
The government had rejected a claim by the George Soros-founded CEU that it complied with the controversial law requiring foreign-headquartered universities to operate a campus in their home country.

The ECJ said this infringed on World Trade Organization rules on fair market access and acted contrary to the provisions of the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights, which protects academic freedom and the freedom to conduct a business.

The CEU — which is registered in the United States where Soros lives but has its main campus in Budapest — said it had complied with the law after opening a facility in the US state of New York.

Crackdown on academic freedom
But a Hungarian government spokesperson called the American site "a Potemkin campus" [a reference to the fake villages reportedly set up in imperial Russia to impress the visiting Empress Catherine II — Editor's note] that failed to satisfy the law.

Attracting students from over 100 countries and offering US-accredited master's programs, CEU, founded in 1991, had long been seen by Orban as a hostile bastion of liberalism.

CEU moved largely to Vienna in 2019 in light of Orban's legal challenges.

Orban's government has clamped down on academic freedom more broadly in recent years, for example, by banning universities from teaching gender studies.

The Hungarian leader has also targeted Soros personally, accusing the Hungarian-born Jewish philanthropist of destroying European civilization by promoting illegal immigration into the country.

Soros has said his support for refugees is part of a larger humanitarian mission to back open societies around the world.

In May 2017, a Soros-backed non-governmental organization, Open Society Foundation, was forced to move its staff and offices to Germany from Hungary after Orban's government instituted new regulations against foreign-funded NGOs.

[Tamas]

Only 2.5 years after the demonstrations against this were finally dispersed by the police, well done ECJ

[The Larch]

 

[Sheilbh]

I mean it is a fair point.

The EU (justifiably) launched legal action over a proposed British law that might breach the Withdrawal Agreement and have suggested they'll use the court's fast-track procedures that can get a ruling in a few months (the average time in the CJEU is about 18-24 months). It's not beyond the power of the Commission to have tried to expedite this, or just treat the other cases against Hungary and Poland with a similar sense of urgency instead of just slow-pedalint it..

[Tamas]

More importantly, CEU has long been set up in Vienna instead. So this ruling is a moot point.

Also roughly at the same time there was a new law requiring NGOs themselves in a Russian-style a foreign interest if they receive funds from abroad. I think the wording in Hungary is less directly insidious but it's the same point. Just last week I read about some education NGO thing denied to apply for EU funds (since that's handled by the national government) because they would not go along and declare themselves foreign interests due to some other funding they received. But there shall be an ECJ ruling on this any year now.