Sargentini? What does that name mean to you? If you’re not Hungarian, then I suspect that the answer is: ‘Not a lot’. If you are Hungarian, unfortunately, the chances are that that name is indelibly marked on your memory, as though it had been branded into your brain.
Then again, if you’re not Hungarian, why would you have heard of a green MEP from Holland? The woman I’m talking about, Judith Sargentini, is only infamous in Hungary due to the fact that she was the woman who either chose, or was chosen to copy and paste a document together in order to provide the EU with a reason to punish Hungary in a way which they’ve never punished a member state ever before.
Sargentini is the woman who was chosen to stick the knife into Hungary with a report which claimed that Hungary is undermining the ‘core values’ of the EU.
In a flagrant attack on a sovereign nation, this woman sought to assist her liberal kin in the EU in penalising Hungary in an manner hitherto unprecedented.
This is the woman who put together, and no, I’m not going to say that she ‘wrote’ this report. She put it together, she cobbled it together. Appointed by a European Parliament Committee, she compiled the report which recommended that Article 7 of the treaties be invoked in the case of Hungary, alleging that Hungary was in breach of the EU’s ‘core values’.
Now, forget about the fact that this can barely be explained, let alone proved. Anyone with a half a working brain can see that trying to define a core value is a difficult task. Trying to then prove that a state is in the process of violating a ‘core value’, such as the protection of the rights of minorities, can surely only be compared to shadow-boxing in the dark.
Forget the fact that even though it is Orbán’s governments which have enshrined in legislation that hate speech is not tolerated, Sargentini, with all the arrogance and self-indulgence that we have come to expect from those who call themselves ‘liberal’, accused the Hungarian Prime Minister first of delivering anti-Semitic hate speech, and then of being responsible for ensuring that an illegal Syrian migrant didn’t receive a fair trial. Presumably Orbán is also responsible when Sargentini’s shoelaces break.
It doesn’t matter. This was a show trial from the very start. This was another attempt to bring Hungary into line with the liberal way of thinking, independent thought and opinion be damned!
So, Sargentini’s report. Vague and woolly, cobbled together from things written by others, by those who have a perennial axe to grind against Hungary’s conservative government. Well, we didn’t really dare hope for anything unbiased. Again, that’s not the point. The point is, as with the majority of EU-connected affairs, that double standards are invariably applied. Now, we’ve become used to being on the receiving end of double standards, but this time, the EU hit a new low.
This time, in order to endorse the non-entity Sargentini’s hotch-potch of a report, the EU ignored their own rules. Follow your own example, eh?
In order for the Sargentini report to have been adopted legally, a majority of two-thirds of the votes cast would have been required.
The procedural rule states that two-thirds of the total number of votes cast are required. Unless, apparently, you are determined to push through, no matter what, a report which will lead to the punishment of Hungary.
Ignoring the Treaties of the EU, the EU’s own procedural rules and perhaps most importantly, the EU’s practice to date, this time, with Sargentini’s mass of lies in a folder, the EU decided that abstentions should be discarded as though they had never been registered.
I beg your pardon?! There’s only one person more confusing than that:
So yes, that’s the situation that we find ourselves in: the EU urge willing MEPs to write fantastical reports about how nasty we are. We laugh at the idea, knowing full well that there’s nothing to be worried about – after all, nobody with even the faintest connection to reality would vote for a report from Fairyland, and then…bang! They move the goalposts to make sure that they get a win!
Cheeky bastards.
So, we get to listen, day in, day out, to misinformed idiots telling us, for example that there is no freedom of the press in our country, which is an out-and-out lie.
We get to be lectured by Germans, whose media is controlled by iron-fisted liberals, desperate to ensure that no non-woke opinions are voiced, and then, to top it all off, we get roundly castigated.
These people don’t speak Hungarian, these people don’t read Hungarian. And the people they get their information from are notorious liars. These people quite obviously have no idea about what’s going on in our country, but still they continue to admonish us.
When they fear that common sense might rear up, when they fear that some MEPs might be starting to have doubts about the reliability of a non-entity like Sargentini, then the goalposts are quickly moved. Nothing is left to chance.
As Gulyás Gergely, the Minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office stated:
In the assessment of the Hungarian Government, the European Parliament (EP) did not adopt the Sargentini Report with the required two-thirds majority.
- Gulyás pointed out that this was akin to parliamentary rules taking precedence over the Constitution.
The present Hungarian government’s refusal to allow liberals to dictate has been a thorn in the side of the ever-more liberal and woke EU for a long time. As the percentages and power within the EU have altered, so the liberals, who have been in ascendence for far too long, sought to alter the very nature of the EU, to prevent countries like Hungary from being able to state and demonstrate their opposition. They might well not like the comparison to the USSR, but it’s the same blueprint.
And just as it was always par for the course that the Soviet Union’s rules were, on occasion, extremely flexible whilst on other occasions, extremely inflexible, so it is with the new version: USSR 2.0; the modern-day EU. When your motion is in doubt, do what the EU do best: cheat.