Two days after the electoral victory of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, the Executive of the European Union announced that it has started the disciplinary process against the country that will cut funds due to violations of basic principles of the rule of law.
“The Commission [Europeia] told Hungarian authorities today that we are going to send a formal letter to start the conditionality mechanism,” said President Ursula von der Leyen.
Formal notice is part of the protocol for this type of procedure. In November 2021, the EU sent a letter to Orbán demanding anti-corruption measures. According to Von der Leyen, the response to the document was unable to create a consensus and led to the conclusion that it was necessary to proceed to the next step.
In the meantime, however, Hungary and Poland – which had also been sued for having rigged the judiciary and questioned the primacy of European law – appealed to the European Court of Justice to try to overturn the measure.
The rule was in force since the beginning of last year, but it can only be applied effectively against states that violate democratic rights and values when the high court ruled, in February, against the appeals presented by Orbán and Mateusz Morawiecki.
The populist and ultranationalist governments of Poland and Hungary have long diverged from the mechanisms adopted by the EU, but they received a response from the Justice that the measure to cut funds has a valid legal basis and respects the limits of the competences attributed to the European bloc by its members. .
Both countries must feel the economic impacts. Poland has seen €15m of its European funds discounted for failing to comply with an EU decision to close a coal mine — another €36bn (R$183bn) in investment funds. recovery from the pandemic are frozen due to violations of democratic values; the value corresponds to 7% of the country’s GDP. Hungary, on the other hand, has €7 billion (R$35.7 billion) frozen, 5% of GDP.
At the time of the court decision against Orbán, about two months before the Hungarian elections, analysts estimated that the measure could have some impact on the campaign.
If there was, it was not enough to undo the prime minister’s reelection plans, who easily won his fifth term at the head of the government – the fourth in a row – despite the unprecedented alliance of opposition that tried to overcome differences to stop the authoritarian escalation in the country. parents.
“We’ve had a huge victory. So big that it can even be seen from the moon, and it can certainly be seen from Brussels,” Orbán said on Sunday, as he celebrated the result with supporters from atop a stage set up in Budapest.
The speech made reference to the city that is the administrative headquarters of the EU, a bloc with which the prime minister accumulates differences due to his project of “illiberal democracy”, with anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQIA+ measures and against freedom of the press, in addition to his proximity to Russian Vladimir Putin.
