Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-06-08-Speech-3-538-000"
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"en.20110608.24.3-538-000"2
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"Madam President, I thank my fellow Member from the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) who wants to start a debate with us here about the Hungarian constitution. That is laudable, because when I hear the representative of the European Council say ‘We have not discussed this in the Council’, and when I hear Commissioner Reding say ‘A country’s constitution is up to that country alone and it is not for us, at European level, to interfere with that’, then I am glad that we in the European Parliament are, indeed, having this debate amongst ourselves.
Are we really not supposed to get involved? Is this a purely Hungarian affair? I would not say so. The state of democracy in a Member State of the EU does concern the other Member States. If a country chooses to use a fair election and a two-thirds majority to create an autocracy, the rest of us are allowed to be shocked by that and to try and oppose it. I quote György Konrád here, who says: ‘In Hungary, a so-called majority knows how to create an autocratic regime in a democratic way’. That is true. If you push a law through the Hungarian Parliament and decree that, from now on, it may only be amended with a two-thirds majority, you know that it is not going be easy to amend it again after the next election. This sort of thing erodes the function of elections as a democratic instrument. It is the right of a nation to say every four years, ‘We liked this, but we did not like that’, and to then bring about changes. However, if a democratically elected regime sets things up so that no amendments can be made for many years after, that is unhealthy and wrong. If we in Europe avert our eyes and say ‘This is purely a Hungarian affair’, if 26 Member States are not prepared to say, ‘Friends, we do not treat people like that in our society’, and if the European Commission says the same, what should we then say, as a group, to countries where the situation is even worse? What should we tell those Hungarians who are not part of the two-thirds majority? ‘Terribly sorry, you will not have any chance to reverse these laws after the next two elections, either’. I find it absolutely appalling that all of us in Europe are averting our eyes and that we are failing to take action."@en1
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