March 11, 2020 / By mobanmarket
Concerns about justice commissioner’s stance on the government of Viktor Orbán.Reding’s campaign on Hungary angers EPP
Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for justice, has become embroiled in a dispute with Europe’s centre-right party, of which she is a member, about her aggressive stance towards the current Hungarian government.
Joseph Daul, the leader of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament, this week launched a counter-attack against what he regards as underhand briefings by Reding’s staff against the government of Viktor Orbán.
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The Commission is preparing an assessment of Hungary’s recent constitutional changes. On 12 April, it issued an initial assessment that it found reasons for “serious concerns”.
Daul was incensed by two online articles published earlier this month by maszol.ro, the website of a Hungarian-language newspaper in Romania, Új Magyar Szó. Citing a member of Reding’s staff as a source, they suggested that the EPP is considering expelling Orbán’s party, Fidesz. They said that Fidesz is considering joining the European Conservatives and Reformists group. Other assertions by the source were that José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission’s president, has already concluded that recent amendments to the Hungarian constitution are “not acceptable” and that Barroso’s view is backed by Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.
Daul wrote to Új Magyar Szó denying the allegations. He added a twist to his letter: “If Mrs Reding or her advisers wish to say something on Hungary, they should also do so in writing.”
Masz’s reports alluded to conversations at a dinner in Dubrovnik. Staff in Daul’s office said that they had established that those attending included Reding and Martin Selmayr, the head of her private office.
European Voice put to the commissioner the accusation that her office was responsible for the briefings. Her office refused to comment.
Wilfried Martens, the president of the EPP, denied that the expulsion of Fidesz was being considered.
The incident has added to concerns already expressed by some in the Commission that Reding has been misrepresenting the balance of opinion about Hungary within the college of commissioners.
The Commission was discomforted by a report in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 17 April, which alleged that “a growing majority” of European commissioners support launching legal action against Hungary under Article 7 of the EU treaty, which could lead to a suspension of its voting rights.
Barroso is thought to be against an Article 7 procedure.
A Commission official said: “Some of the briefing is clearly unhelpful and does not reflect the position of the Commission.”
György Schöpflin, a Fidesz MEP, suggested that Reding was using Hungary to pursue a broader agenda. “I think that what she wants to do is to find the basis of other instruments by which the European Commission can discipline other countries,” he said. “If she is really serious about this, she has to isolate Fidesz in the EPP.”
He warned that such an approach would be dangerous and could strengthen Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, which entered the national parliament for the first time in 2010.
Reding ruffled feathers in the ranks of the French centre-right MEPs – where Daul is prominent – in 2010 when she challenged France’s expulsion of Roma and again last May when she tweeted after Nicolas Sarkozy’s defeat in presidential elections: “Une France de la justice, enfin!”
Hannes Swoboda, Daul’s counterpart as leader of the centre-left MEPs, said: “I find it highly questionable that the EPP attacks Ms Reding over her independent evaluation of Hungary’s latest constitutional amendments rather than draw the appropriate conclusions regarding Fidesz’s EPP membership.”
Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberal MEPs, said that “the ‘cat and mouse’ game being played by the current [Hungarian] government with the EU institutions is degrading of both”.
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