hungary – Lattmann Tamás honlapja

More than meets the eye – an infringement case at the court with a potential wider effect for the future

An infringement procedure against Hungary was launched nearly three years ago by the European Commission, and after lengthy negotiations without any results, it announced in July 2022 that it would refer its debate with Hungary to the Court of the European Union. 19 November has seen the hearing for the case, in front of a full court in session, with a high number of member states and the European Parliament as interveners in the case, representing their own opinion – which is fairly rare with infringement cases.

According to the position of the Commission, the contested Hungarian law (the so-called Child Protection Law) violates not only the provisions of more of the laws of the European Union (e.g. the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, the E-Commerce Directive), but also various principles: the principle of freedom to provide services, or the right to data protection and certain notification obligations. The Brussels-based executive also argued that by violating the rights to human dignity, freedom of expression and information, private and family life and non-discrimination, the contested Hungarian law also violates the common values enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) – those being respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.

Not only a usual “Commission v. member state” debate

The wide interest with the case is demonstrated by the fact that after the Commission filing in the case to Court, an international campaign was launched to encourage member states to participate in this procedure, namely on the side of the European Commission – a very unusual idea related to infringement procedures, where member states usually are more interested in defending themselves against “Brussels”. As the result of this campaign, a total of sixteen member states (and the European Parliament) officially indicated their intention to participate in the proceeding as interveners, supporting the arguments of the Commission. Fourteen of these member states were also present at the Court hearing, and the vast majority of them also addressed the Court, just as the European Parliament did.

Who thinks what about who is right?

The essential part of the arguments is fairly easy to conclude: all the intervening states’ position were clear on agreeing that the European Commission is right and that adopted Hungarian law should be condemned, as it is in clear violation of the aforementioned EU laws, thus constitutes a violation of obligations deriving from the founding treaties.

However – and this easily becomes the really interesting thing about this case – as this is the first time that the European Commission has made the violation of the values under Article 2 TEU the subject of a major procedure, all the intervening states have addressed this subject intensely, with much more attention than the actual basic question of the case itself. And this may be important to emphasize because this is precisely the area in relation to which the Article 7 procedure is also underway currently against Hungary, and where the various procedures against member states may collide with each other.

Infringement procedure v. Art. 7 procedure?

One of the central elements of the Hungarian official argument is that the current judicial procedure creates a parallel with the procedure under Article 7 TEU. Neither the court, nor the intervening member states seemed to accept this argument, but they have made it clear in their contributions, that this is a realistic danger that they want to avoid. Hence, nearly all of them has drawn attention to the necessity of the violation of a specific legal obligation and to the proving of that so that an infringement could be based on that. It seems to be clear, that the European Commission was well prepared for this, since it also mentioned several exact EU pieces of legislation in its application and mentioned the violation of Article 2 as a supplementary problem to all of those. The member states present at the hearing seemed to want to reduce the future possibility of infringement proceedings being initiated solely on the basis of Article 2, therefore they argued intensely on a possible set of criteria to be fulfilled in future possible cases.

This is not only about some kind of self-defence, but also has a significance at a pan-European level, where the possibility of proceedings under Article 7 will actually be made impossible (and empty), if infringement proceedings will be possible to be initiated on the grounds of a breach of fundamental values embodied on Article 2 TEU. One question is, when the European Court of Justice will deliver a judgment in this case, will it cite Article 2 TEU as a reference point, or whether it will develop its case law on this later.

This way the case also has a strong political-constitutional dimension for the future, and it is not only whether the Orbán government of Hungary will lose a simple lawsuit. If the Court finds that Hungary has violated the fundamental values under Article 2 TEU, this would inevitably have an effect on the ongoing Article 7 procedure, which is currently clogged in its first stage in front of the Council (a fur-fifth majority of the member states is needed, but it has not been reached so far). A judgment like that would lead to a very strange situation: the Court would deliver a legally binding judicial decision on a question, which is currently subject to political consideration by the member states in the Council, seemingly unable to reach a compromise for four years now. It could provide strong confirmation and a basis for reference for member states critical towards the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán and may push those who are currently hesitant to take the procedure to a new stage.

How will the proceeding continue and what comes next

The next step in the court proceedings in this infringement proceeding will be the adoption of advocate general’s opinion, in which a preliminary legal position will be rendered to the Court. This is not binding on the Court in the case, but in almost all cases the subsequent judicial decision is in sync with that. The advocate general’s opinion is to be rendered during the next few months, and it is possible that the Court’s judgment will be rendered during the first half of 2025.

It is most likely that the Court will condemn the contested Hungarian legislation, but the interesting part will be what the Court will do with arguments based on the violation of Article 2 TEU – is that violation going to constitute an infringement by itself, or will the Court follow the more careful argument of the Commission’s application? In the first case, it will set a precedent with currently uncalculatable effect.

You can watch the broadcast of the hearing online here. The original post is available at the C4EP website.

Interview about the Hungarian political situation

I was contacted by a journalist from Brazil with a few questions related to the Orbán regime, Hungarian politics, rule of law etc. The interview is available online now in Portuguese, below You may find the full-text version of my answers to the questions asked by the author in English:

1. At this stage, Fidesz has essentially seized control over every major institution in society. The government, the electoral system, the media, the courts, and now are also in control of higher education. Could Viktor Orbán retain a degree of power over universities beyond the 2022 election? Is that the creation of a deep state?

Surely it is. Universities is just one small part of the whole picture. Viktor Orbán has gradually cemented himself and his allies into all segments of the Hungarian society and economy. Even in the case of losing the governmental position after the next year’s general elections, all of the independent constitutional institutions are packed with his allies or servient individuals. This was made possible by the unscrupulous use of the constitutional majority gained in 2010, the first action using that being the “reform” of the electoral laws, practically ensuring new constitutional majorities for him in 2014 and 2018, and the introduction of not only the new “Fundamental Law”, but additionally the very awkward solution which dictates that newly constitutional-majority-appointed individuals shall stay in their office even after their term closes as long as someone else is elected with the same majority: this practically makes it possible for pro-Orbán people to stay in office indefinitely and yes, to create a pro-Orbán deep state.

2. How do you evaluate the changes implemented by the government?

The situation is quite strange, we could even call it a bit perverted. This model for operation of universities is not a novelty, You can find many institutions with tradition and prestige being ran in this model. But there is a vast difference: those operate on this model for decades or even longer, contrary to the reformed Hungarian universities. Those get some amount of initial capital from the government, but also a collective leadership consisted of exclusively pro-Orbán individuals, to add insult to injury, in many cases of simple politicians, often with extremely high salaries, being 3 or 4 times of an ordinary professor’s renumeration.

At the same time, there is no guarantee that any badly needed changes or improvements would follow this in the system of the higher education as a whole or in the given institutions. This is practically nothing more than a privatization of these institutions to the pro-Orbán circles.

3. Criticism from the opposition hasn’t been toned down, and the parties’ alliance has recently asked the Constitutional Court to annul the law because it goes against democratic principles. In a recent interview, Viktor Orban goes back to his ideological considerations stating that ‘the reason is that the left in Hungary is an internationalist creation, while universities are national institutions. We do not want them to become globalists, losing their national character.’ How can this new university legislation affect student’s lives and the country’s development?

Well, at least the veil has fallen, and finally Viktor Orbán has stopped faking about “efficiency” of the higher education and “better possibility to build connections with the economy”, for which – according to him so far – this step was needed. I do believe that even he himself got fed up with these ridiculous fake “arguments” and finally he is happy about talking honestly about what he wishes to achieve – even if it sounds like a weak fairy tale from two hundred years ago. Universities may be “national” in some aspects, and do have an immense role in e.g. preserving national values and traditions, but even the origin of the name “university” does not support this idea.

This claim is just cheap propaganda, which is quite much to the liking of the sympathizers of Viktor Orbán and his party. For him and his government, universities serve many goals: good for creating paid positions to their servients, look for recruitment of potential new ones, spread governmental ideas and to build some pseudo-scientific justification for those. The latter is being supported by the lavish funds and targeted support.

The problem with all that, that the students do not get quality education, but in many cases, plain propaganda. I would say that recognizing that is also a useful skill, and students get quite good at that, but still, their time can be and should be used better. Additionally, they lose job opportunities, at least out of the world of the current Hungarian government-built pseudo reality, no wonder that more and more Hungarian students go to abroad

4. Last September, students at the University of Theatre and Film Arts (SZFE) protested against restricted academic freedom and occupied its campus becoming, since then, the symbol of a resistance movement that has received widespread (inter) national support. They also expressed concerns about the ideological pressure from Attila Vidnyánszky, who wants to boost education towards what he calls ‘national and Christian’ values. What is the importance of the movement, and how important is the autonomy of higher education institutions?

The movement has shown a rare example of resistance to the Government, but I am not sure that it will have a long-lasting effect. Any initiatives like that had a certain life-span but none of those could go on for long or even achieve any substantial changes.

Autonomy is theoretically very important to all higher education institutions, but unfortunately it does not have its practices and routines in Hungary with universities. Symbolic, that we still have those silly legal provisions in force that the president shall appoint the professors of universities, while the prime minister appoints professors to colleges. Why do political actors have the task of appointing scholars whose performance should be and is evaluated by anybody else but them? And what is the base of this differentiation between universities and colleges, the latter not being “good enough” for the attention of the president, “only” the prime minister? And all this, even if we talk about private institutions. I repeat, this is merely a symbolic problem, but still tells stories. Additionally, the vast majority of the income of universities have traditionally been coming from the state budget, which fact has not helped “autonomy” of universities even before the current Orbán-era starting in 2010. The change with Orbán can be described again by the magic word “unscrupulous”, which I have used in my first answer: before him, political actors have not felt the courage to openly conflict with universities, and they have tried to uphold – even if many times falsely – an image of non-intervention and respect of autonomy, especially when many of the university and academic leaders have been open supporters of the then-opposition Viktor Orbán. Now, after falling out of grace, many of them try to pose as oppositional figures against him, but that basically just adds to the tensions within the opposition.

5. Much has been said about the democratic backsliding of Hungary, this illiberal democracy of Viktor Orbán. How does this latest change in university structure fit into all this?

Logically. See the examples in answer to Q1.

6. European leaders have been anxious about how to slow down this decline for years. What could be done?

They should actually start doing something – first understanding the way how Orbán thinks would be a great step. He is not a “traditional European” leader. The magic word is again “unscrupulous”. He does not care about “European political cultural values”, he is more of a hit-and-run politician. He uses opportunities as they show up, sometimes disregarding consequences on the long run. What is very important, he dares to take risks, while he is often obviously well-informed about the games he enters. He does not care about bad reputation, what’s more, he uses that proudly by appealing to many Hungarians’ “the whole world is against us” feeling, turning it into something they feel they shall also be proud to. Traditional “European deals” do not work with him, the only possibility that European leaders can do is to try to narrow the field of maneuvering for him: connecting EU funds to certain values like rule of law is a very important first step.

7. Are you optimistic about the 2022 elections in Hungary? Do you believe in the defeat of Viktor Orbán? Why?

The current situation does not make it possible to form any prophecies, for many reasons. The parties of the political opposition may try to cooperate and form a one-on-one front against all candidates of Fidesz on the elections, they may even conduct the “oppositional primaries” for the first time, scheduled for the fall of this year, but there are still an enormous amount of work to be done, if they want to challenge Orbán and his party successfully next spring. And even if they succeed, the problem of the “deep state” mentioned in the first answer will become a serious reality…

Video interview about the recent “constitutional coup” in Hungary

I have been asked for interviews by numerous representatives of international press and many colleagues working all over the world recently about the current situation in Hungary. I have decided to make these interviews and information available here as well and also to open an English section to my website. Expect more English content soon!

We start with the video interview recorded yesterday by Medyascope, together with Ms. Dalma Dojcsák from Hungarian Civil Liberties Union.

I will give You a more detailed analysis soon, as I believe that much of the information reported by international media lacks accuracy and do not put proper emphasis on the important points needed to understand the problems in their entirety.