Justice Minister Judit Varga said the opinion of the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union that the court should dismiss the action brought by Hungary and Poland against the so-called rule-of-law conditionality regulation is “not the verdict, just an opinion”.
Hungary and Poland turned to the ECJ last March with the complaint that the European Parliament’s decree, which was endorsed by the European Council, lacked a legal basis.
Minister Varga said on Facebook in an English-language post that the opinion of Campos Sánchez-Bordona “ignores the fact that the conditionality regulation suffers from a manifest error in law, which alone would justify the annulment”. “Furthermore, its legal basis remains erroneous while it circumvents the Treaties and infringes basic rule of law requirements, in particular the principles of legal certainty and legislative clarity,” she added.
The minister said that “before tears of joy well up in the eyes of the Brussels elite and the left-liberal media, let me just remind everyone: this is only a proposal. The judgement is not expected until the end of the year, early next year”. “The Hungarian Government maintains its position and hopes that the Court will base its judgment solely on legal arguments and common sense, it won’t follow the erroneous arguments of the Advocate General, and will instead annul the regulation or call on the EU legislator to amend it,” she said. “We say no to blackmailing with the rule of law!”
The lawmakers representing ruling Fidesz in the European Parliament said they would continue to make every effort to resist “blackmail” masked as “rule of law”. The “so-called conditionality regulation” is obviously aimed at depriving member states of EU funds if they fail to meet the EU’s expectation, the group said in a statement.
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