“The European Commission has ‘launched a manhunt’ against a few Central European countries that are speaking honestly and openly about the challenges facing Europe and were capable of providing effective responses to those challenges”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in a statement to Hungarian news agency MTI on Thursday.

The Minister issued the statement in response to the fact that on Wednesday the European Commission called on Poland to suspend its reform of the judicial system, voicing its “serious concerns” that the planned changes could undermine the independence of Poland’s court system.

The European Commission has launched a manhunt in which it is “arbitrarily picking on Hungary and Poland”, Mr. Szijjártó said. “The latest stage of this process is that the Commission is once again attempting to interfere in Polish internal affairs”, he said.

“According to European law, the Commission’s task is to uphold the EU treaties, not to “act as a political body and especially not to issue politically-based statements”, Mr. Szijjártó stressed. “This latest ‘mission’ by the European Commission contravenes both European regulations and European fundamental values. We are shocked by the fact that we have arrived at the latest station of this manhunt”, he said.

“Hungary stands in solidarity with Poland, and we take this opportunity to once again assure Poland of our friendship and solidarity, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told the Polish Prime Minister in a letter this morning”, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.

“We stand in support of Poland and call on the European Commission to refrain from overstepping its sphere of competence and stop trying to act as a political body, because the European Union’s political body is the European Council, which is comprised of the heads of state and government of the member states of the European Union, not the European Commission”, Mr. Szijjártó highlighted.

On Thursday, the lower house of the Polish Parliament (the Sejm) adopted the Supreme Court reform bill, which had previously received heavy criticism from both the opposition and the European Union.

(MTI)