After attending a ministerial meeting, János Bóka, Hungary’s EU affairs minister, said EU institutions use the Article 7 procedure and the rule of law proceedings in general “as a political tool”.
Speaking to reporters, Minister Bóka commented on “the timing” of the European Commission’s recent decision to close the Article 7 procedure against Poland, saying that it had been made “just a few weeks ahead of the EP elections”. The minister said he had sent a letter to Věra Jourová, European Commissioner for Values and Transparency, asking several questions about the EC’s “evaluation in connection with the situation in Poland”. Bóka said he had pointed out several concrete instances of the Commission “applying political double standards”, adding however that the EC had not given a “meaningful” response to any of his questions. Speaking about the preparations for the upcoming summit of the leaders of EU member states in late June, Bóka said that the EU affairs ministers were in agreement at their Tuesday meeting that the summit’s agenda must include discussions about Ukraine’s security situation, competitiveness and foreign relations as well as setting a “strategic timetable” for decisions to be taken on highly important issues during the next EU cycle. Hungary was among the several countries that proposed to put on the summit’s agenda the issue of migration and its “external dimensions” as a separate topic, Bóka said.