Over the last few years, Hungary has seen its fair share of such games. Last week’s hearing at the EP Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) offered an interesting twist, though. It exposed the fact that the real motivation for the hearing on Hungary was always different.
Last Thursday, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó had the unenviable task of enduring this hearing on “democracy in Hungary.” As with so many previous hearings, he confronted baseless accusations from ill-informed committee members on the state of democracy in Hungary. Usually, with time, the accusations are all dismissed, failing to stand up to any serious scrutiny, but by that time, the political circus has run its course and few are paying attention any more.
This time, however, the initiators of the hearing betrayed their true intentions. It was never about so-called European values, state of democracy or rule of law. These hearings would serve one purpose: to apply political pressure on European governments to get them to toe the line on policies they oppose, policies like the migrant quota.
The debate thus turned to migration and the plan for a permanent mandatory resettlement system that Hungary has clearly opposed – an idea that, according to FM Szijjártó is not only contrary to common sense but also “impossible to implement” because there is no method of forcing people who are settled in a certain country within the Schengen Area to remain there.
Instead, the solution is better protection of the EU’s external border and respecting the sovereignty of member states by maintaining migration and refugee affairs as matters of national competence where they belong.
“When people attack Hungary,” Minister Szijjártó said at the hearing, “they are attacking a country that has moved from becoming part of the problem in Europe to being part of the solution through its own efforts.”
Brussels and pro-migration organizations keep talking about human rights, yet they violate the people’s right to security, a Swedish MEP said during the debate. We’ve seen this approach in previous hearings and we saw it again in last Thursday’s session.
Hungary, however, as Minister Szijjártó and other members of the Orbán Government have pointed out, is not going to cave to political pressure. The government believes it has a responsibility to act according to the will of our own citizens and not according to the will of European politicians or bureaucrats who have no accountability to Hungarians. Funny that in response to this position we get lectures on democracy and rule of law.
Members of the European Parliament’s LIBE Committee, George Soros-funded NGOs and other sympathizers of the open borders approach will keep pressuring us, but in the long run, I am sure they cannot defy the will of the people of Europe. That’s why they are getting angry, and that’s why we are exposing their true motives, that it was never about European values. It was always about applying political pressure to advance their ideologically-driven agenda.