Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-01-18-Speech-3-194-000"
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"en.20120118.23.3-194-000"2
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"Mr President, I cannot quite believe the sitting we are having this afternoon. Is it really democracy, the rule of law and human rights that we are talking about?
A Prime Minister of a Member State has travelled here to provide some explanations. This is unusual enough to be a noteworthy event, and we would be delighted by it if we did not think that it would be exploited for purely domestic political ends.
What exactly are we talking about today? We are talking about a constitution that was rushed through in a few weeks by a government taking advantage of the huge majority it gained in the national parliament: a majority which everyone knows is artificial.
This constitution was passed in April last year and came into force on 1 January this year. In the meantime, over 300 laws have been passed, 30 of which are ‘Cardinal Laws’ dealing with matters of some importance, to say the least, from the point of view of so-called ‘EU values’. These are matters such as the independence of the judiciary, certainly Mr Barroso, but also the threat to freedom of expression and media pluralism; the definition of nationality; abandoning the republican structure of the State; compromising the separation of Church and State by parading so-called ‘Christian values’; promoting a very narrow view of the family; challenging the status of minority groups, especially homosexuals and Roma people, and freedom of the unions. It is a long list, and no doubt I have forgotten something. The European Parliament alerted the Commission in July last year, Mr Barroso, but we had to wait until December before you became concerned about what was happening in Hungary, only to announce that we should keep an eye on the independence of Hungary’s central bank. A fine demonstration of what EU values really are!
The proceedings that were initiated yesterday are therefore not sufficient to deal with the problem, any more than the answers coming out of Hungary are. Fascism is knocking at Europe’s doors once again, in the shape of nationalism and fear mongering, taking advantage of the social consequences of the economic and financial crisis, which the European institutions are daily proving incapable of handling. We should indeed remember the past: but the whole of the past. At least within this Chamber, let us not allow history to stare in disbelief. Let us really help supporters of democracy in Hungary. No-one is manipulating them, Prime Minister; they are simply daring to believe in values that, as Aung Sang Suu Kyi reminded us this week, are universal: the values of democracy and human rights."@en1
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