“Hungary and the other Eastern European nations know what freedom is, because they struggled to achieve freedom during communism, and accordingly it is most unfortunate that the Western European political left are now lecturing these countries”, Government Spokesperson Zoltán Kovács said on Monday in London, referring to last week’s vote in the European Parliament on the so-called Sargentini Report.

The Government Spokesperson, who held a press discussion for British and Hungarian reporters at the Hungarian Embassy in London, declared: “There is a political debate going on with regard to the situation in Hungary, and in many regards this is another attempt by ‘the so-called liberals’ to monopolise the voicing of philosophical and political opinions, and is certainly political revenge for us ‘not having stood in line’ with relation to certain political decisions”.

According to Mr. Kovács, the debate on the future of Europe is being fought between the federalist and the pro-sovereignty forces, but unfortunately it has become practically impossible to conduct an honest and open debate on the issue because of the debate’s “expropriated character”.

The majority of issues that the so-called Sargentini Report mentions have been successfully closed with the European Commission, and if a dispute of a legal nature is closed, it means that the given issue has been resolved. For this very reason it is impossible for the European Parliament (EP), which is neither a court nor a legal service organisation, to relaunch such a case based on its “political taste”, he explained.

“This is nonsense, and this is what represents the greatest threat to the operation of the European institutional system”, the Government Spokesperson added.

“Although this was clearly a political affair, the European Parliament did its best to mask the Sargentini Report as a legal issue, but the reopening of cases that have already been closed by the European Commission and by other European institutions contravenes the fundamental norms associated with the rule of law”, he declared.

According to Mr. Kovács, the only way to achieve the two-thirds majority required for the adoption of the Sargentini Report was to ignore votes cast in abstention, and by applying this method the European Parliament has violated precisely the sanctity of the rule of law in the name of the rule of law.

The Government Spokesperson recalled last week’s statement by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the fact that the protection of the EU’s external borders must be reinforced in the spirit of the fight against illegal immigration, and that this requires countries on the outskirts of the EU’s external borders to transfer part of their national sphere of competence to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex). According to Mr. Kovács, Hungary’s standpoint is that “this will not be happening”. Hungary has made the most successful effort out of all the EU member states to protect the EU’s external border from illegal immigration, and “we will not give this up”, he added.

He stressed that in 2015 over 400 thousand people crossed the Hungarian border without any kind of permission and while totally ignoring regulations, and dozens of people are still attempting to cross the border daily even today, meaning it is not at all true that the danger no longer exists. “Pro-migration forces are making a major effort to ‘steal’ certain elements of the sovereignty of nation states, but the consistently professed Hungarian position continues to be that EU member states must bear responsibility for the protection of their borders, because that is the most effective method of border protection”, Mr. Kovács said.

In reply to a question concerning suggestions that Britain’s governing Conservative Party voted against the Sargentini Report because London wants to avoid tensions with Hungary during the course of the Brexit negotiations, Mr. Kovács replied: “Hungary is not engaged in separate negotiations with Great Britain on the conditions of the termination of its EU membership, nor is it negotiation with any of the remaining EU member states with regard to this issue”.

“The exit negotiations are being conducted on the part of the EU by the European Commission’s Chief Negotiator, Michel Barnier, and Hungary is adhering to the rule according to which the 27 member states of the European Union are negotiating with London as a single entity”, he added.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)