Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Europe must stand up to Hungary and Poland

George Soros 19th November 2020

The European Union cannot afford to compromise on the rule-of-law provisions it applies to the funds it allocates to member states.

Viktor Orbán, Hungary and Poland
George Soros

Hungary and Poland have vetoed the European Union’s proposed €1.15 trillion seven-year budget and the €750 billion European recovery fund. Although the two countries are the budget’s biggest beneficiaries, their governments are adamantly opposed to the rule-of-law conditionality that the EU has adopted at the behest of the European Parliament. They know that they are violating the rule of law in egregious ways and do not want to pay the consequences.

It is not so much an abstract concept like the rule of law that the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and, to a lesser extent, Poland’s de facto ruler, Jarosław Kaczyński, oppose. For them, the rule of law represents a practical limit on personal and political corruption. The veto is a desperate gamble by two serial violators.

Unprecedented step

It was also an unprecedented step, coming at a moment when Europe is suffering from a dangerous surge of Covid-19 cases, and it threw the other EU countries’ representatives into confusion. But when the shock wore off, closer analysis revealed that there is a way around the veto.

The rule-of-law regulations have been adopted. In case there is no agreement on a new budget, the old budget, which expires at the end of 2020, is extended on a yearly basis. Hungary and Poland would not receive any payments under this budget, because their governments are violating the rule of law.

Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content.


We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Thank you!

Please check your inbox and click on the link in the confirmation email to complete your newsletter subscription.

.

Likewise, the recovery fund, called Next Generation EU, could be implemented by using an enhanced co-operation procedure, as Guy Verhofstadt has proposed. If the EU went down this road, the Orbán-Kaczyński veto could be circumvented. The question is whether the EU, with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, perhaps leading the way, can muster the political will.

I am a committed supporter of the EU as a model of an open society built on the rule of law. Being of Hungarian Jewish origin, I am particularly concerned with the situation in Hungary, where I have been active as a philanthropist for more than 30 years.

Kleptocratic system

Orbán has constructed in Hungary an elaborate kleptocratic system to rob the country blind. The amount by which he has enriched his family and friends is difficult to estimate but many of them have become exceedingly wealthy. Orbán is now using the new wave of Covid-19 to amend the Hungarian constitution and the electoral law (once again) and to entrench himself as prime minister for life by constitutional means. That is a tragedy for the Hungarian people.

Let me give a few examples of how Orbán has robbed the Hungarian people. He has transferred vast sums of public money to a number of private foundations that he indirectly controls. By a clever constitutional trick, Orbán is now permanently removing these assets from the public domain; it would take a two-thirds majority of parliament to return them to the Hungarian people. The amounts involved add up to nearly $2.8 billion.

In a series of fraudulent transactions, companies close to Orbán purchased over 16,000 ventilators on behalf of Hungary for almost $1 billion, far exceeding the number of intensive care beds and medical personnel that could operate them. An analysis of international trade data shows that Hungary paid the most in the EU for ventilators from China, at one point paying over 50 times more than Germany.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

One of these companies also secured an order from Slovenia, whose prime minster, Janez Janša, is a close political ally of Orbán. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) needs to investigate whether the EU was defrauded. The recent contract for the Russian vaccine that will make Hungary the first European country to use it deserves to be investigated.

At the same time, Orbán is seeking to avoid accountability for these actions and taking steps to prevent a repeat of the local elections in 2019, when his Fidesz party lost control of the municipal government of Budapest and other major cities. He is going out of his way to deprive Budapest of financial resources, vetoing the city’s application to borrow money from the European Investment Bank to buy new mass-transport equipment amenable to social distancing.

Budapest is now looking at a $290 million shortfall in its budget for 2021. Similar conditions prevail in other cities with local governments that are not controlled by Fidesz.

Limited chances

Hungary’s opposition parties are bravely trying to challenge Orbán by forming a common list of candidates for the 2022 general election. But their chances of success are limited because Orbán can change the rules at short notice, as he has already done several times before. Conveniently, Orbán is planning to introduce the latest changes to the electoral law while the pandemic is raging, Budapest is under curfew and soldiers are patrolling the streets.

Moreover, Orbán exercises almost total control over the countryside, where the majority of the population lives. He controls the information they receive and voting in many villages is not secret. There is practically no way the opposition can prevail.

Only the EU can help. EU funds, for example, should be directed to local authorities, where there is still a functioning democracy in Hungary, unlike at the national level.

The EU can’t afford to compromise on the rule-of-law provisions. How it responds to the challenge posed by Orbán and Kaczyński will determine whether it survives as an open society true to the values upon which it was founded.

Republication forbidden—copyright Project Syndicate 2020: ‘Europe must stand up to Hungary and Poland‘

George Soros

George Soros is chair of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations. A pioneer of the hedge-fund industry, he is the author of many books, including The Alchemy of Finance, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means and The Tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival? His most recent book is In Defense of Open Society (Public Affairs, 2019).

Home ・ Politics ・ Europe must stand up to Hungary and Poland

Most Popular Posts

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Conservative,conservatism Boris Johnson: blustering onPaul Mason
deglobalisation,deglobalization,Davos Getting deglobalisation rightJoseph Stiglitz
schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza

Most Recent Posts

public services,public service,women,public service workers Public services should not be the victims of inflationIrene Ovonji-Odida
gdp,gross domestic product Let’s count what really mattersJayati Ghosh
green transition,just transition,fossil fuel,energy transition,Ukraine,Russia Ukraine and the geopolitics of the energy transitionBéla Galgóczi and Paolo Tomassetti
energy,efficiency,generation,solar,price,inflation From subsidising energy to reducing dependenceHans Dubois
SPO,Rendi-Wagner,Austria,social democratic,social democrat,social democracy A social-democratic decade ahead?Robert Misik

Other Social Europe Publications

National recovery and resilience plans
The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020

Eurofound advertisement

Minimum wages in 2022: annual review

Nominal minimum wage rates rose significantly in 2022, compared with 2021. In 20 of the 21 European Union member states with statutory minimum wages, rates increased. When inflation is taken into account, however, the minimum wage increased in real terms in only six member states. If current inflation trends continue, minimum wages will barely grow at all in real terms in any country in 2022.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

ETUI/ETUC conference: A Blueprint for Equality

Join us at the three-day hybrid conference ‘A blueprint for equality’ (22-24 June).

The case against inequality has already been strongly articulated. Inequality is not just incidental to a particular crisis but a structural problem created by an economic model. Now is the time to explore what real equality should look like.

As a media partner of this event, Social Europe is delighted to invite you to this three-day conference, organised by the ETUI and ETUC. More than 90 speakers from the academic world, international organisations, trade unions and NGOs will participate, including the economist Thomas Piketty and the European commissioner Nicolas Schmit.


MORE INFOMATION HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube