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The proposal was approved with 448 votes to 197 (with 48 abstentions). To succeed, it required an absolute majority of the European Parliament (376) and two thirds of the votes cast, excluding the abstentions. It is the first time such a situation has occurred. Even the chairman of the European People’s Party, Manfred Weber, voted to trigger article 7, although he gave permission to each EMP to vote freely.

This decision means the EP urges the Council of the EU – formed by the ministers of European governments – to act against Hungary in the face of what it considers “a systemic threat to its founding values”. These values, reflected in Article 2 of the EU Treaty, include respect for democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights.

“The vote is a clear defeat for the Hungarian government and its illusion of ‘remodelling’ the European People’s Party”

— Edit Inotai, Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy

“The vote is a clear defeat for the Hungarian government and its illusion of ‘remodelling’ the European People’s Party,” Edit Inotai, analyst of the Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy (CEID), considers. “His argument saying that the European Parliament wants to punish Hungary for having an antimigration Government doesn’t work in Europe. The ‘Sargentini report’ [which was voted] critizices the Government in twelve points and only one of them is related to migration.”

Parliament’s key concerns generate a long list and relate to:

• the functioning of the constitutional and electoral system,
• the independence of the judiciary,
• freedom of expression,
• academic freedom,
• freedom of religion,
• freedom of association,
• the right to equal treatment,
• the rights of persons belonging to minorities, including Roma and Jews,
• the fundamental rights of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, and
• economic and social rights
• corruption and conflicts of interest,
• privacy and data protection.

Among other issues, Viktor Orbán has always cast the suspicion of terrorism on asylum seekers arriving in Hungary and the rest of Europe in recent years. His administration built up fences to avoid a large arrival of these persons.

And in August of this year the NGO Human Rights Watch reported that the Hungarian authorities did not provide the necessary food to the asylum seekers whose petition they had rejected at the border. This happened, while these people were being held in Magyar detention centers.

He does neither make a difference between refugees and economic migrants, to whom international law confers very different rights and forces the reception of those fleeing from a situation that puts their lives at risk. International law also establishes a whole process with guarantees before deciding whether a person should be a refugee or not and thus avoid the so-called “pull backs” at the borders.

“The government firmly rejects the principle that the current migration should be seen as a human right,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said a month before the elections in Hungary last spring. Fidesz, Viktor Orbán’s party, won with 49% of the votes.

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“It’s a nasty surprise for Orbán that his supporters in the EPP, especially Weber and the Germans, voted against him”, Inotai notes. She forsees Fidesz’s exit from the European People’s Party in the near future to come together with the extreme right parties. But she warns that would not be such a good measure for the EPP, which would loose twelve of its representatives in the European Parliament.

‘Sargentini’s report’

The European Parliament voted its agreement with the report of the Dutch MEP for The Greens Judith Sargentini, who has been working on it for months.

“The European Parliament sends out an important message: We stand up for the rights of all Europeans, including Hungarian citizens and we defend our European values,” Sargentini said. “Now it is up to the European leaders to take their responsibility and stop watching from the sidelines as the rule of law is destroyed in Hungary. This is unacceptable for a Union that is built on democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights.”

“Orbán and his spokesmen will behave as if nothing had happened. Hate speech and propaganda won’t change, but I’m sure they are a little scared”

— László Cselényi, former head of the Hungarian international public TV

Everyone agrees that this Wednesday’s vote is a warning to other European governments going in the same direction as Orbán is. But its practical consequences remain to be seen. For László Cselényi, former head of the Hungarian international television Duna TV, “Orbán and his spokesmen will obviously behave as if nothing had happened. Persons who may critize them will be called communists and servers of [George] Soros, [Hungarian tycoon contrary to Orbán with whom he has an open confrontation]. ”

Csenényi believes that “hate speech and propaganda won’t change” in a country where there is practically no traditional mass media which remain independent. He believes that the Magyar president will “back down” on some specific decisions to calm the mood in the EU, such as the closure of the CEU university. But little more.

“Sargentini’s criticism has come at an appropriate time and is justified, but it won’t have any positive consequences on Hungary’s domestic policy in the near future,” he says. At the same time, the former head of public television concedes: “I’m sure that [Orbán and his team] are a little scared.”

Will there be sanctions now?

If the application of article 7 were carried out, sanctions would be imposed on the Orbán government, which could lose its right to vote in the decisions of the European Council (the heads of state or government of the 28). French presidente, Emmanuel Macron, welcomed yesterday’s vote. But European legislation provides for a dialogue with the Member State concerned – in this case, Hungary – to avoid reaching this situation.

The proposal for a Council decision is now forwarded to the Member States, which must vote. They will need a majority of four fifths to support the ‘Sargentini report’. The Hungarian Government has the right to restate its arguments before the Council, as it has done this Wednesday before the European Parliament.

The Council may then make recommendations to Hungary “to counther the risk” of violation of the founding values instead of directly putting sanctions in place, explains the press release. In a later stage, the European Council can rule on the “existence in Hungary of a serious and persistent breach of the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights”. But it must be agreed unanimously and passing through the European Parliament again. Only then could the sanctions take place.

* Article updated in a second version to include Edit Inotai’s analysis.

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La entrada Orbán’s Hungary suffers its worst defeat to date… but will there be real consequences? se publicó primero en Salam Plan.

A group of grannies agrees to go together to the market in their town because they are afraid of immigrants coming to rape them. It is not a fictional scene. It is what is really happening in Hungary, as described by Edit Inotai, an analyst at the Center for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy (CEID) in Hungary, on a telephone conversation with Salam Plan. She cannot help but laughing at a situation that seems ridiculous to her. “There are not even immigrants here,” she says.

László Cselényi, former director of the Hungarian international television Duna TV, criticizes that there is no real government programme. “They are based on exploiting fear of the unknown, fostering hatred towards other religions and cultures,” he argues.

More and more Hungarians agree with the extreme defense of Hungarian culture as they think they could be facing a flood of illegal immigrants who are potential terrorists because they come from countries with a Muslim majority, as Orban’s government puts it. According to it, thousands of them are waiting on the other side of the border fence raised during the European refugee crisis to cross it as soon as they can. Orbán and his party, Fidesz, have been repeating this idea of ​​the ‘invading threat’ for years.

“It’s more of a cultural thing, to maintain the European society. I don’t think we Hungarians have a strong Christian faith, like the Poles,” Inotai points out. “I also have conservative friends who travel a lot abroad and say they see a lot of Muslim people and tell me: ‘we don’t want a country with such diversity'”, adds the analyst.

In words of the government’s spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, the people who would arrive in Hungary should the Executive accept the current quota of about 1,200 refugees or future quotas, would just bring “problems” with them. Orbán’s team does not distinguish between asylum seekers and economic migrants, so Kovacs denies their admittance as a human rights issue. “The government firmly rejects the principle that current migration should be seen as a human right,” he recently said.

“The government firmly rejects the principle that current migration should be seen as a human right”

The prime minister was re-elected last Sunday with 49% of the votes and a 70% of participation to the surprise of researchers, acknowledges Inotai, who thought that high participation would favor the opposition. In addition, another 20% of the votes was taken by Jobbik, the party which formerly was the far-right-wing representative in the country and which, for these elections, tried to swap into moderation and snatch votes from Fidesz.

Orbán said in an interview with the German newspaper Bild last January that for him, the refugees “are not refugees, but Muslim invaders”. He argued that is the reason why many Syrians had tried to reach prosperous Germany before going through “stable” countries like Hungary. It was in 2015 that many asylum seekers actually passed through the Magyar country, but most of them stayed there only during the days that the Orbán Executive prevented them from taking trains at the Keleti station in Budapest to continue their way out of the country.

“All terrorists are basically immigrants,” he said in another interview, this one with Politico in 2015, although it is an idea sustained over time by the Hungarian leader.

Propaganda without effective counter-campaign

This barrage of statements against foreigners, especially against Muslim foreigners, found almost no ideas or contrary explanations in the public domain. Little did it matter that most of the terrorists who have attacked in recent years in Europe were born or raised here, like those who killed in Spain in 2017 or like the terrorists of the Paris attacks in 2015. Neither did it matter that the vast majority of terrorists had nothing to do with the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers who arrived in the midst of the refugee crisis in Europe – although some did get away, like the teenager who attacked with an ax in a Bavarian commuter train.

It did not even matter that for mere practical reasons it might be interesting to host future workers in an economy that is certainly going well with only around 5% of unemployment, which nevertheless requires labor force in sectors such as construction, health or education, according to Inotai. She recognizes that the Hungarian language is very complicated to learn for foreigners, though.

And, while for the elections of 2014 some media had already closed and some NGOs critical of the government had already been raided in their headquarters, for this election the media and political opposition had virtually disappeared. Cselényi recalls that a friend of Orbán named Mészáros Lörinc owns 18 local and regional newspapers “that disseminate the same propaganda content”. Inotai adds that although there is still an important critical newspaper in Budapest, regional radio stations are also uncritical and only on the internet there is a broader spectrum with divergent opinions to those of Orbán. But older people in the provinces do not access these media, she thinks.

‘Serious risk for the rule of law’

This week the Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Judith Sargentini presented a report on the political situation in Hungary in view of the possibility that the Magyar State is failing to comply with the principles of the European Union of respect for human dignity, democracy, plurality, tolerance, etc. established in Article 2 of the Lisbon Treaty.

“Since 2012, the (Hungarian) Constitution has been changed six times. Justice has lost independence in favor of control of the Executive”, the MEP of The Greens highlighted at a press conference. She also pointed to issues such as the closure of media, a “new legislation that affects the freedom of religion, with already registered churches that were removed from registration,” or harassment of some NGOs and problems for freedom of expression.

Despite accusations by Fidesz’s MEPs of publishing the report four days after the elections in their country as a revenge, Sargentini stressed that she initially planned to publish it in March and it was precisely postponed not to interfere in the election campaign. In addition, she underlined that her report is based on facts documented by bodies outside the European Parliament, such as the United Nations or the Hungarian courts themselves.

An OSCE report on the 2014 elections already put in serious doubt the cleanliness of those elections, since Fidesz “enjoyed an undue advantage due to restrictive campaign regulations, biased media coverage and campaign activities that blurred the separation between the political party and the State”. On this occasion, the OSCE has emphasized that the news programmes on TV, for example, gave the government version and that the opposition had no real option to publicize its message.

The opposition does not want immigrants either

However, the opposition’s message would not have really refuted the anti-immigrant propaganda of Orbán’s team. For Inotai and Cselényi, there is no doubt that this year’s elections have suffered from a lack of plurality in speeches, not only because of the media panorama, but also because of the Hungarian opposition parties.

“The opposition parties ignored the issue of immigration – erroneously – to avoid falling into the trap of Fidesz. They did not dare to go against public opinion, given that they accused them of being agents in the service of foreign interests,” Cselényi explains.

“The opposition was very distressed about this topic. No one is really in favor of immigration, because society does not want it”

“The opposition was very distressed about this issue. No one is really in favor of immigration, because society does not want it,” Inotai says. There is another factor that explains the triumph of the speech of fear in Hungary, according to this expert. “It is not only the anti-Muslim propaganda, it is also the feudal situation of Hungary. The best results of Fidesz have been in the provinces, where they receive state aid with community work programmes. Many people live from it. They are very poor and in these areas there is no other work.”

The ‘Sargentini report’ now enters a period of amendments and will be finally voted on next September. In case of obtaining at least one third of the agreement of the European Parliament, Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty will apply, which would lead to sanctions against the Magyars for violating the rule of law according to European regulations.

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La entrada This is why hate speech is so successful in Hungary se publicó primero en Salam Plan.