Government: political crisis in the EU clear

The signs of a general political crisis in the functioning of the European Union are clear to all, especially to the Hungarian government, Balázs Hidvéghi, an MEP of ruling Fidesz said in an op-ed for Friday’s edition of the daily Magyar Nemzet.

Hidvéghi noted that Hungary was preparing to assume the presidency of the Council of the European Union for a second time in the second half of 2024. This, he said, was a challenge because of what he called ongoing efforts to establish an overly centralised political union, “a federal united states of Europe” without the conditions for this being in place.

He said this kind of progress in European cooperation could not be derived from the current EU treaties, and the European people were not unified enough for it, either.

Hidvéghi said the “pursuit of self-serving centralisation” and the “aggressive stigmatisation of conservative thought” were gradually overpowering reasonable political and economic cooperation, adding that this went against the interests of member states and the European people.

He said Europe had to confront the fact that it was made up of different nations and cultural customs. If certain western European nations preferred a future of being “dissolved in a multicultural mix”, they had a right to decide to live that way, the MEP said, adding, however, that they could not force this upon anyone else.

Meanwhile, Hidvéghi said both the European Commission and the European Parliament were constantly working to expand their powers. He said that instead of fulfilling its function of being the guardian of the treaties, the EC had become “an ideologically completely biased player” whose proposals involving “neo-Marxist woke ideology” and migration “regularly violate” member states’ sovereignty and identity.

He added that the functioning of the bloc, particularly when it came to foreign relations, was characterised by a “moralistic attitude”, which he called “the latest form of colonisation”. “Western Europe wants to force its own, new leftist ideology onto the entire world,” he insisted.

Hidvéghi said that “seeing the current saddening state of affairs”, many believed it was “time for us to leave the EU and give up the often seemingly hopeless battles”. But as a central European nation with many of its compatriots outside its borders “it is evident to us that our interests lie in close European cooperation,” he added.

The establishment of the common market, education and cultural cooperation, the common agricultural policy and cohesion policy are all “obvious achievements” of the EU, Hidvéghi said. “These must be protected and kept operating,” he added.

“That means we must stand by the EU treaties currently in effect and find allies for Europe’s return to policies based on common sense,” the MEP said.

Hidvéghi added, at the same time, that one possible scenario was the EU moving towards a “differentiated functioning” with certain member states opting out of cooperation in certain areas and on certain policies. He underlined, however, the need to firmly reject efforts to do away with the requirement for unanimity in decision on the most important matters, saying this guaranteed that the interests of smaller member states did not go ignored.

As regards the Russia-Ukraine war, Hidvéghi said the EU was incapable of making decisions that aligned with its own long-term interests and was behaving in a subordinate manner in a global geopolitical fight. He said the bloc’s “ill-advised sanctions policy” and its push to continue “a stalling war” instead of aiming for a ceasefire and a peace deal demonstrated the absence of the bloc’s independent thinking on foreign policy.

He said Ukraine’s accession to the EU “would mean the end” of the bloc in its current form. “The leaders of the EU are either unaware of this . or they are fully aware of it and aren’t serious about what they are saying but are downright cowardly and cynical,” he said.

Hidvéghi said that “in such a situation” it was key for Hungary to carry on with European cooperation while protecting its national self-determination and right to independent decision-making. He added that many of the country’s western European partners that shared Hungary’s “sober-minded and realistic position”.

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