Fidesz MEPs slam EU institutions for Balkans policy, COVID, journalists rights – UPDATED

Orbán’s ruling party, Fidesz, has 12 MEPs in Brussels. The party left the European People’s Party (EPP) in 2021 to avoid a possible exclusion. But their coalition partner, KDNP’s (Christian Democratic Party) MEP, György Hölvényi, remained among the ranks of the EPP. Anyway, Fidesz’s MEPs began a full-scale attack yesterday against several policies of the European Commission. The EP elections are approaching quickly, so the campaign already started.

Fidesz calls for more sensitive approach to Western Balkans

The European Union, in light of the current geopolitical situation, should apply a more sensitive approach to the complex problems of the Western Balkans, Kinga Gál, an MEP of ruling Fidesz, said in Strasbourg on Tuesday. Addressing a debate in an EP plenary session on the European Commission’s 2022 report on Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gál said the report was “unbalanced” and “intensified conflicts instead of easing tensions”. Hungary’s stance on Bosnia and Herzegovina demonstrates that dialogue based on mutual understanding is needed instead of “lecturing and threats of sanctions”, Gál said. She said this policy had been vindicated by the autonomous Serb Republic’s approval of two of the three so-called Berlin Process agreements following Hungary’s intercession.

Gál called it “unacceptable” that the EP’s “left-wing majority is advocating party interests when, for example, it criticises the presence of Hungarian companies, conflating them with Chinese companies from outside the EU”. She added that it was “unfair” that the report was being used to mount an ideologically based attack against the commissioner for enlargement. Gál urged meaningful support for Bosnia and Herzegovina, which she said would best be provided by speeding up the bloc’s enlargement.

Olivér Várhelyi, the European commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement, said everything was in place for Bosnia and Herzegovina to begin to deliver on the key priorities needed for its EU accession. The EU believes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Várhelyi said. Though further reforms are needed, there have been positive developments, such as the adoption of the state budget, the migration strategy and the counter-terrorism strategy, he said.

EU’s stronger protections against SLAPPs give journalists, rights activists ‘privileges’

Ernő Schaller-Baross, an MEP of ruling Fidesz, has said that a bill endorsed by the European Parliament on tightening the protection of journalists, human rights activists, researchers and artists against strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) constituted “unprecedented privileges” for those actors. The Hungarian MEP issued a statement in reaction to a vote at an EP plenary session in Strasbourg on Tuesday which adopted a draft legislation on increased protection of those actors against SLAPPs, a particular form of harassment directed primarily against journalists and human rights defenders to prevent them from or penalise them for speaking up on issues of public interest.

The draft was adopted with 489 votes to 33 and 105 abstentions. In his statement, Schaller-Baross said the outcome of the vote clearly went to show that “the representatives of the European left exclude civil organisations, rights groups and human rights activists from the jurisdiction of a member states and grant them unprecedented privileges”. “Under the proposal drafted by Brussels, civil organisations will no longer be subject to law, so we have entered an era of NGOs boasting privileges,” the MEP said.