Macron: EU must fight for liberal values
BRUSSELS — French president Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that the European Union needs to fight a “cultural” and “civilizational” battle to stop the rise of illiberal ideas across the 27-nation bloc that he believes are threatening European values at their core.
Macron spoke at the end of summit of EU leaders in Brussels where they strongly clashed with Hungary’s prime minister over new legislation that bans the display of LGBT issues to children in that country.
Macron condemned the new law in the name of “human dignity” and “individual freedom,” throwing his support behind the EU’S executive commission’s plan to start legal action against Hungary.
But the French president insisted it would be wrong to point the finger at Orban without reflecting on the reasons pushing some countries in eastern Europe to turn their back on democratic values.
“How do people in Europe come to this?” Macron told journalists. “We see in several member countries like Hungary, Poland and many others, an anti-liberal conservatism against our values. We have to respect it. But it is now undermining those values and what has built the core of our western liberal democracy for centuries.”
The Hungarian law has also turned the spotlight on the EU’S inability to rein in the “illiberal democracies” among its ranks like Hungary and Poland. Critics charge that the two countries’ deeply conservative, nationalist and anti-migrant governments have flouted the bloc’s democratic standards and values for years.
The EU has repeatedly warned that democratic standards are being challenged in some countries, particularly in Hungary and Poland.