EU is timidly complicit in allowing democracy to be dismantled
Our obsession with the Trump circus blinds us to the real fascism going on under our noses, writes
IF Trump wanted to go gently into the night, he wouldn’t be allowed. Three months after US democracy showed it was resilient to Trumpian tactics, the obsession with Trump goes on. It will not end despite the former US president being found not guilty yesterday at his impeachment trial in the US Senate.
Our obsession with the “attempted coup” and Trump’s “fascism” is understandable. The trial had a lot of entertainment value for those at home watching CNN. It offered a mix of courtroom drama and high politics. But the trial, and the breathless media reporting, showed we are willing to throw about words and phrases without thought. We don’t appear to have a clue what a coup or fascism actually are.
Trump’s regime was ugly, uncouth and incompetent, but he didn’t attempt to dismantle the US constitutional order. It was not genocidal. As coups go, that was one of the most inept attempts ever.
Europeans who enjoyed the impeachment trial might look east to see an actual genocide happening within Chinese borders. Our reaction to that is a complicit silence. And we don’t even have to look that far east.
Come closer and the trial of Alexei Navalny shows the further dismantling of human rights and the rule of law in Russia. But the European
Union’s response has been embarrassingly weak, culminating in a visit to Moscow by Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, last week. Borrell stood silently while the Russian foreign minister harangued the EU. It happened at the same time as Russia expelled a number of European countries’ diplomats.
But we don’t even have to go as far as Moscow to see fascism in action. It is happening with the EU’s own borders. Tonight, Klubradio, Hungary’s first independent radio station in the post-communist era, goes off air — having lost its broadcasting licence. The liberal commercial station was one of the few remaining stations in Hungary that was critical of the government there.
The Hungarian media council, which was set up and is controlled by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party decided the radio station broke administrative rules. The station appealed, but it was hardly surprising that it lost that appeal. The Hungarian courts are also controlled by the Fidesz party.
The Treaty of the European Union is clear that the cornerstone of EU membership is democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights. In the last decade, Hungary has systematically dismantled the normal democratic structures that might be considered
essential to membership of the EU.
On taking power in 2010, Orbán moved to take control of the media through a new media council. It shut newspapers critical of the government on the grounds of the need to provide ‘balance’. Orbán
effectively shut the country’s premier university when it became a source of criticism of his government. He took control of the judiciary by first reducing the retirement age of judges in order to move out senior judges and install ones loyal to him. He then took control of judicial appointments and reduced the power of the Constitutional Courts.
Constitutional changes have given him more power to silence opponents, and Hungary has seen its media taken into state control. The electoral system has been changed to help Fidesz and the party can rely on state resources to fund its campaigns. The upshot is that Hungary is regarded as only ‘partly free’ by Freedom House, a measure of how democratic a country is.
Hungary offended Western sensibilities with its attempts to stop migrants crossing its borders during the migrant crisis. The pandemic has given all governments significant new powers, ones that this time last year we would have baulked at. Orbán gave his government emergency powers to rule by decree, and though they have been removed, he retains the right to reimpose them. He used concerns about misinformation to increase his control over the media.
Orbán proudly declared Hungary an “illiberal democracy”, one where Christian values would be supported. But it is hard to accept its classification as a democracy, even an illiberal one. Yet he gets his back slapped at EU council summits.
It is not just happening in Hungary. Hungary is a model for Poland, where the Law and Justice party (PiS) has undermined judicial and media independence.
Why has the EU allowed this to happen? The internal politics of the EU have meant that EU leaders, including Leo Varadkar, have been slow to criticise Hungary. Fidesz is a member of the European People’s Party (EPP) — as is Fine Gael. The EPP has been very slow to be critical of its sister party.
The way it chooses the president of the Commission means that each party grouping needs to maximise its number of seats in the European Parliament. So they tolerate Orbán. But Irish or German voters don’t punish Fine Gael or the Christian
Democratic Union for its attachment to Orbán.
Over the past decade, the EU has facilitated Orbán tightening his hold on power through funding. EU subsidies are used by Fidesz as a way to secure the power of the party, as they can be distributed by the government to projects and businesses that support the party.
Why not cut funding? The EU rules which give national governments a veto make this difficult. To cut funding or impose sanctions on Hungary requires the agreement of all other members. But Poland will not agree to sanctions that might be later used against itself.
The EU did impose some rule of law conditions on funding last summer and hoped to use qualified majority voting, but when the EU came to agree its multi-year budget in December, Poland and Hungary refused agreement until they were able to get those conditions suspended.
The EU looks powerless to deal with fascism within its own borders, which might explain why it is so quick to entertain accusations of fascism in other democratic places.
‘Why has the EU remained silent about fascist regimes operating within its borders?’