George Soros’s foundations support and sponsor the organisations that provided background documents for the European Commission’s rule of law report, Pál Völner, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Ministry of Justice told journalists on Friday.

Mr Völner said according to the available data, eleven of the twelve organisations providing background documents for the report are sponsored and supported by “Soros organisations,” and have recently continuously attacked the government, among others, on the issue of migration or the “prison business”. He added that since the formation of the Orbán Government in 2010, the Helsinki Committee – among others – has received grants worth almost a billion forints from George Soros.

Additionally, he continued, the European Commission itself supports the operation of these organisations, and the Commission itself continually attacks Hungary on the issues of migration and the rule of law, or on other issues in the past such as the sector-specific levies and the reduction of household utility charges. According to the State Secretary’s conclusion, “these all add up to some kind of revenge, to blackmail in this report”.

He pointed out that the report also features issues which Hungary already concluded in debates with the Commission before 2014. According to Mr Völner, this is akin to bringing up again that in 2006 Vera Jourová, incumbent Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency, was arrested on corruption charges, and was only released “due to a low level of evidence”.

This is a fact as is that in Belgium corruption charges were brought against European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders at the time of his election which were then swiftly dropped, he observed. He also pointed out that Vera Jourová had insulted Hungary describing the country as “a sick democracy”.

Mr Völner said in summary that this report cannot be regarded as acceptable, and the European Commission “would do well to start pondering why it is that a billionaire speculator has free access to the commissioners’ rooms,” why it is that he is free to give advice on which organisations should be financed, and which criteria of the rule of law should be enforced in countries where his influence cannot prevail due to Christian-conservative forces in government.

Journalists asked the State Secretary for his opinion regarding the fact that the German national public service radio later corrected its article relating an interview with Vice President of the European Parliament Katarina Barley which claimed that, according to Ms. Barley, Member States such as Poland and Hungary should be financially starved because in these countries the violation of the principles of the rule of law is not confined to individual, isolated incidences, but is systemic. According to the radio, in actual fact, the Vice President used the expression ‘financially starved’ in connection with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Mr Völner took the view that “threatening Poland with starvation sounds rather awkward coming from a German”. “This is an unacceptable statement, the same as if she had made an anti-Semitic statement,” the State Secretary pointed out, adding that Ms. Barley should consider resigning.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade/MTI)