With its EU Presidency, Finland has set out to limit Hungary’s (and Poland’s) access to EU structural funds. While Finland itself is not a champion of rule of law either, they keep citing ‘grave concerns’.
Unsurprisingly, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee – a Soros-funded staunch opponent of Prime Minister Orbán’s government – joined the quarrel yesterday with a Facebook post that paints the usual negative picture about Hungary, saying that rule of law in Hungary is “at the bottom of the well”. They even attached a visual portion of the World Justice Project (WJP) report to the shameful caption. While it may look convincing at first, a closer look reveals that, in fact, it’s a nothingburger.
Here are two facts the Helsinki Committee failed to disclose:
Although the WJP report comes dressed up as a serious, data-packed, scientific document, in reality it’s a mere public opinion polling result mixed with left-liberal statistical wizardry. Its findings are, as you can read here, “based on more than 120,000 household and 3,800 expert surveys.” While in certain socio-economic topics, polls can indeed yield useful results, rule of law is not one such area. Mainly because it’s far too complex and only few possess the knowledge necessary for evaluating it.
Secondly, who funds the World Justice Project? Waitforit. Billionaire financier George Soros through the Open Society Initiative. Take a look at this page.
Oh, the irony! A Soros organization – the Hungarian Helsinki Committee – cites the “scientific” research of another Soros-funded NGO slamming Hungary. Where have we seen this before?
Photo: sfgate.com