Opening photo: Frederick Florin/AFP
The European Parliament will end the 2019-2024 cycle in a dignified way: tomorrow they will vote on Hungary. In the vote on the EP’s agenda “the representatives give a final assessment for this cycle on the unfreezing of frozen EU funds,
about the dead-end procedure according to Article 7, and about other threats to EU values in the country”.
The vote concludes the debate held two weeks ago, on April 10, during which the representatives of the European Parliament asked the delegates of the European Commission and the European Council about the release of Hungarian funds. The text adopted by vote “focuses on the Commission’s role in releasing EU cohesion funds for Hungary, especially in light of the Parliament’s relevant legal procedure” – can be read on the website of the Parliament. In addition, the text will certainly reflect on the fact that the Article 7 procedure initiated by the EP in 2018 has still not reached anywhere, even though last January the Parliament asked the Council to move the procedure to a new phase.
According to the agenda, they will also speak “on the upcoming Hungarian presidency of the Council of the European Union”, as well as “On Hungary’s repeated abuse of the veto right and its blackmail in the European Council”.
But they will also make a case out of the fact that the Commission has initiated infringement proceedings in connection with the Sovereignty Protection Act.
By the way, on April 10th, there was not just one debate about Hungary in the EP, but two, because on the initiative of Katalin Cseh, the representative of the moment, the representatives of the Council and the Commission “extent of China’s leverage activities” was also grilled in connection with According to Cseh, this discussion was necessary because the Ministry of the Interior recently concluded an agreement with China that Chinese policemen will be able to patrol together with Hungarian policemen in Chinese communities living in Hungary, as well as in touristic places. “While the EU has begun to address the risk of authoritarian intervention, it remains blind to intervention from our own authoritarian member states.
The fact that Chinese police officers will soon start patrolling in Hungary is foreign interference in the affairs of the EU and a significant risk to the security of the EU.”
– declared the representative of the moment.
Tomorrow’s vote has no impact on the EU funds to be paid to Hungary, nor on any other ongoing matter between the Commission, the Council and Hungary.
