Hungary, Poland justice ministries react to EU rule of law report

The justice ministries of Hungary and Poland issued a joint statement on Wednesday in reaction to the European Commission’s 2020 report concerning the rule of law in member states released earlier in the day, the Hungarian ministry told MTI.

According to the statement, the report “raises serious concerns with regard to its concept, methodology, sources, and content” and it “cannot serve as a basis for any further discussion in the European Union concerning the rule of law”.

The statement further said that the scope of the report had been defined arbitrarily, and it failed to define objective criteria that would be equally adaptable to each member. The report goes against the concept of rule-of-law reviews as proposed by the Commission, the statement added.

The report’s sources had not been selected in a transparent and impartial way, authors of the statement said.

They called it “unacceptable” that the report had been based “almost exclusively” on contributions by organisations “belonging to a centrally financed international network that wages a coordinated campaign against democratically elected governments of the EU”.

The statement also suggested that

the state of the rule of law in member states should be evaluated in “objective, impartial, and non-political” procedures “to avoid application of double standards”.

The report fails to meet those criteria, the authors added.

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Source: MTI