63 Members of the European Parliament have signed a letter to the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Council to apply Article 7 of the Treaty of the European Union against Hungary. Article 7 which needs the final approval of 4/5 of the EU Member States would suspend Hungary’s voting rights in the European Council if applied.
The letter organised by Estonian MEP of the European People’s Party, Riho Terras states that Hungarian President Viktor Orban has undertaken illegitimate diplomatic visits to Russia and China at the start of Hungary’s rotating Presidency of the European Council. Meanwhile, the European Commission has boycotted the rotating EU Hungarian presidency over the visits, effectively hampering the Hungarian presidency in administering the EU’s legislative process.
This is not the first time that Hungary was under the process of Article 7 however, and so far, no effective majority in the European Council was in place to strip Hungary of its voting rights. This is also not the first time that MEPs have called for the enforcement of Article 7 on Hungary. Apart from abusing the European Council Presidency for illegitimate foreign diplomatic visits, Hungary’s rule-of-law has kept deteriorating with the Hungarian government applying its control over most of the press, the judiciary and all state institutions.
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