The European Parliament’s new campaign proposal would not only end the foreign affairs veto by amending the EU treaties but would also give the EU more power in the area of the rule of law and migration. As part of that overreach attempt, it would also suspend Hungary’s right to hold the EU presidency.
The year 1000 is not only memorable for Hungarians: at the turn of the first millennium, unexpected events took place in the whole of Europe, including on the fringes of the continent barely touched by Latin Christianity, in Poland and Hungary, where Christian conversion had been going on for years.
Timmermans’ name might ring a bell with our readers, as he has frequently criticised the Hungarian government and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
‘A significant part of European culture is fading away. The Greek tradition of philosophy, knowledge, curiosity, is being lost. We live in the period of cancel culture, of narrowing down what can be contested or argued or put into question. In terms of reason, of statecraft, state building, practical political rationality, much has also been lost.’
It seems that the majority of MEPs are aware of the legal and political limitations of the options for action outlined in the Meijers Committee’s analysis, but are committed to continuing to exert political pressure on Hungary and Poland in the coming months.
The Hungarian foreign minister announced that Budapest will not consent to further arms shipments to Ukraine as long as Kyiv fails to remove OTP Bank from its list of international war sponsors.
The controversial document highlights the ongoing concerns of the EU Commission regarding the rule of law in Hungary. While the country has introduced legislative reforms and anti-corruption measures, there are persistent challenges in areas such as judicial independence, media pluralism, legal certainty, and civil society rights.
Notwithstanding his many political failures, such as the Crusade to Nicopolis in 1396, the involvement of Sigismund of Luxembourg in the short-lived, but nevertheless historical reunification of the Christian Churches cannot be discounted.
Marcela Szymanski of the charity Aid to the Church in Need also welcomed the announcement. ‘It is absolutely extraordinary that six years after Hungary created a department in charge of persecuted Christians, another country finally joins them in acknowledging this reality. Not one single other nation with a Christian majority has dared to do so.’
It appears that the Visegrád Four cooperation is once again revitalising itself along the lines of common interests. The green transition and its impact on industrial investment in Central Europe, European security or illegal migration are issues that have prompted the V4 countries, and the Poles and the Hungarians in particular, to once again join forces.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
