Věra Jourová, the commissioner responsible for the European Commission’s Values and Transparency portfolio, is one of the main architects behind the EC’s notorious “rule of law procedure” and the tying of emergency fund payments to an arbitrary set of “rule of law” criteria.
In an interview last September with Der Spiegel, Commissioner Jourová called Hungary a “sick democracy,” claiming that Hungarian people are “not in a position to form an independent opinion.” While that statement was insulting and completely inappropriate for a European commissioner, it was also a blatant violation of the principle of sincere cooperation and clearly incompatible with Jourová’s mandate as an EC vice-president. Not long after Jourová called Hungary a “sick democracy,” Prime Minister Orbán called for her resignation in a letter to EC President Ursula von der Leyen and announced that Hungary would suspend all bilateral communication with the Czech commissioner.
That should have been enough but apparently not. In an interview last weekend (once again in Der Spiegel), Věra Jourová peddled a similar line.
Her opinion about the state of Hungary’s democracy, Jourová said in the interview, hasn’t changed since last September, so our democracy is still “sick.” The commissioner added that this is underpinned by the lack of certain parts of rule of law. These parts, according to Jourová, are the reasons why there are “Article 7 procedures” currently in progress against Hungary and Poland. However, these procedures, Jourová admitted, “have gotten bogged down.”
“It is my nightmare,” Jourová said in the interview, “that the budgetary mechanism has become a new Article 7 and gets blocked as well.”
By expressing gratitude for the creation of the “rule of law mechanism” as the strongest-ever “heavy artillery” for the “protection of rule of law,” the Czech commissioner merely reiterated the same lines that she began advancing in January. Back then, Jourová said that, regardless of Hungary and Poland challenging the mechanism in front of the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, “we can block a lot of money, we have been given a powerful tool.” Although many of our critics scoffed at our use of the word “blackmail,” no other term could better describe what Jourová has been up to lately.
The European Commission, and Věra Jourová personally, have been handed a shiny, brand-new weapon that is now locked, loaded and ready to be turned against any country, such as Hungary and Poland, that dares to defy the agenda of the EU’s pro-migration, liberal majority.
But, mind you, the fact that one can pull the trigger doesn’t make the action legitimate or acceptable or even fair. It’s political. And statements like these from a commissioner, who is supposed to be above politics, are completely inappropriate and should be cause for her dismissal.
Photo credit: ORIGO