Can a Parliament collectively lose its mind? After the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs voted to take the Commission to court for releasing €10 billion to Hungary, this is a necessary question. What some are depicting as a bold move to defend the rule of law is actually a grotesque step to trample all over it. It is an initiative that highlights the fanaticism of the hegemonic Frankenstein coalition (an everything-but-right-wing-parties patchwork) which has ruled the European Parliament for decades.
First, let’s shed some light on the frivolity and fanaticism of this legal action. According to the widespread narrative, the Commission committed the sin of surrendering to Hungarian blackmail when it released one third of the frozen EU funds earmarked for Hungary. It would be a compelling story, if only it were true. In reality, by releasing those funds, the Commission did the bare legal and political minimum. And despite the deafening noise around the deal, the one question that should raise our eyebrows is why Hungary only received €10 billion out of the €28 billion owed in total.
In brief, the EU confiscated funding to Hungary for several reasons (rule of law, migration, the prohibition of gender propaganda for minors) and under different legal pretexts. At the same time, it imposed 27 “super milestones” upon Budapest—requirements that include adopting fund-management IT tools, setting up a new anti-corruption agency, and modifying the functioning of its Supreme Court. A few of those conditions might make sense, but most of them go far beyond the EU’s remit of competences and were probably designed under the expectation they would never be met. However, to the EU’s surprise, Hungary largely delivered. Indeed, so much so that the more Hungary delivered, the more the Commission added new conditions and took advantage of its position to claim that what had been done was never enough. All of this took place under the fierce and enduring political pressure of the European Parliament, which insisted that Budapest can and must be punished whatever it takes. This is the same modus operandi of immobilism and arbitrariness that the EU blithely replicates to exclude Hungarian universities from Erasmus and Horizon.