OK, OK, so this is still par for the course, of course, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to poke at it with a sharpened stick now, does it? No, of course not. Anything I can do to pour sand into the inner workings of the Anti-Hungary machine is an act of joy.
OK, so. As we saw, the initial onslaught of the coronavirus in Hungary caused the government to react. Now, although we all know that this is the sort of thing that governments do, we saw that a lot of people thought it was something that should have been avoided.
The EU, moving with all the speed of a legless, deceased cat, managed to turn the behemoth of a bureaucracy that they claim as their own by about 5º from the North by the time we got to Ursula’s vapid presentation in September of this year about how the EU had saved the world once again.
- “In the last six months, our health systems and workers have produced miracles.
- Every country has worked to do its best for its citizens. And Europe has done more together than ever before.
- When Member States closed borders, we created green lanes for goods. When more than 600,000 European citizens were stranded all over the world, the EU brought them home.
- When some countries introduced export bans for critical medical goods, we stopped that and ensured that critical medical supply could go where it was needed.
- We worked with European industry to increase the production of masks, gloves, tests and ventilators.
- Our Civil Protection Mechanism ensured that doctors from Romania could treat patients in Italy or that Latvia could send masks to its Baltic neighbours.
- And we achieved this without having full competences”
Good God. Can it be true? Is the EU really the best thing since cheese on toast?!
Well, no. This is the EU taking credit for that which individual nations achieved. If we had been so pea-brained as to wait for the EU to come to our rescue, then there’s a good chance that I wouldn’t be around to write this, and in any case, there’d be barely anyone left living to read it.
Still, at least the EU thinks that they deserve a pat on the back, and that’s the main thing. And, not forgetting to give credit where credit’s due: she managed the whole thing in French, then English, then German, something that I couldn’t manage. That said, that fact, in itself reveals a lot about how efficient the EU is, doesn’t it?
Anyway, enough of back-slapping and claiming credit for the work of others, with the development of the virus, and the deaths of millions, it was time, once again, for the anti-Hungary machine to be fired up, once more.
And before you ask, I'm not sure what she's on about when she says they don't have full compentences. In my view, competence, let alone compentences, has been missing from the EU for some time now.
We know about that Hungary was castigated for daring to want to protect its citizens. That was what they started with: the claims that our parliament had been suspended. That wasn't ours. The European Parliament? Yes. Iran? Gambia? Spain? The UK? Bulgaria? Yes. But not Hungary, no matter what you read.
That doesn't matter, the knives were being sharpened for us already:
"an indefinite and uncontrolled state of emergency cannot guarantee that the basic principles of democracy will be observed and that the emergency measures restricting fundamental human rights are strictly proportionate to the threat which they are supposed to counter."
(Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejčinović Burić)
Yes, the old chestnut, the fear of the Hungarian, no one else, just the Hungarians overstepping the mark.
I'm not sure what they think we're going to do...it was the socialist/free democrats that attacked the citizens of Hungary, not the conservative civic government, and that was in 2006.
In passing, we also remember that there was a distinct lack of hand-wringing at the time. The Leftwaffe, whatever else, close ranks when necessary.
Anyway, the point I want to end on is that, notwithstanding all the hand-wringing, the clutching of foreheads in despair, the doomsaying, none of the predicted abuse of power emerged.
As the Hungarian Prime Minister promised, as the Hungarian government promised, when the state of danger was judged to have come to an end, parliament voted to remove the extraordinary powers it had granted to the government.
Oddly enough, there was no reporting of this in the liberal media. The Prime Minister stated at the time that he was awaiting a flood of apologies from within and without the country. I reckon he's still waiting, don't you?
Ah, such dedication to the elastic yardstick. They spent so much time finding ways to deploy it that they even forget their manners.
