Justice Minister Judit Varga has stated that the European Union’s Article 7 procedure against Hungary is a “witch hunt masked as a legal process”.
Speaking to news channel M1, Minister Varga said that although Hungary was putting forward legal arguments during the procedure, because it had been launched “on political grounds”, it would have to be closed on the basis of a political decision.
According to MTI, the minister said that if the EU considered Hungary’s legal arguments, the proceedings could have been closed a long time ago and had made its position clear on multiple occasions over the course of the procedure.
Minister Varga described the procedure as a “well-conceived operation” as part of which “organizations backed by the Open Society Foundation release opinions that are then cross-referenced, used in the drafting of reports and then they have member states read them out.”
The minister said that no one at the recent EU’s General Affairs Council hearing on the rule of law in Hungary “was interested in our answers”, adding that the entire procedure “is starting to look ridiculous”. She noted that EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders had made it clear during the hearing that the commission had no intention of ending the procedure.
The minister added that the EU was looking to turn the procedure into a “never ending story” by inserting topics that were not even mentioned in the so-called Sargentini report that had launched it in the first place.
Photo credit: Magyar Nemzet