The rule of law cannot become a means for political blackmail, Justice Minister Judit Varga said on Kossuth Radio’s programme ‘Good morning, Hungary’ on Monday in connection with the fact that before she was elected, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen made a promise to prepare annual reports about the state of the rule of law in Member States.

“The rule of law is supreme in Europe, but if it is deployed at the level of political declarations, it can easily become a rule of blackmail,” the Minister said, adding that there is no exact definition for the rule of law, it constitutes the totality of the achievements of constitutional evolution during the course of history.

The topic of the rule of law can only emerge within the framework of a dialogue among Member States that mutually respect one another, but it has no yardstick by which one Member State or another could be rated as good or bad, she said.

Hungary fully agrees that the rule of law takes absolute precedence, but if it is used for political purposes as a means of blackmail, that is the end of the rule of law, she pointed out.

If the norm we must rise to and to which even financial sanctions could be attached is not defined, that is the end of the rule of law, she said.

The Minister pointed out that this issue already emerged before the election of Ursula von der Leyen as a Belgian-German proposal.

It was conceived as an intergovernmental dialogue, and rather than involving European institutions in an investigation into the state of the rule of law, it was meant to be a constitutional dialogue among Member States that mutually respect one another. Regrettably, this has been transformed into an institutionalised rule of law report. Hungary expressed a number of political reservations in connection with this idea, Hungary and Poland even vetoed it, and so this concept does not enjoy the unanimous support of Member States, she stated.

Based on the preliminary work completed so far, our conclusion is that the report promised by the President of the Commission to be released at the end of September should be treated with some degree of criticism regarding the source.

Experiences of the past few years show that “during the drafting of such reports, the opinions of the governments of Member States are not taken into consideration with the same weight as the system of fake evidence built on the cross-references of various NGOs,” she said.

She added that also for this reason she is trying to share as much information on her social media account as possible. She mentioned as an example of double standards that while in Hungary the justice minister does not have any kind of institutional influence over systems of the judiciary such as the prosecution service, in other countries these systems fall directly within the justice ministry’s competence.

Ms. Varga said another question that arises is what political consequences could follow if the rule of law report is not supported by all Member States.

She recalled that upon accession, the Member States did not vest the European Commission with such powers, and therefore she said it is inconceivable from a political point of view that the report should have any consequences.

The Minister described the selected topics of the rule of law report themselves as arbitrary as they were not discussed, and objected to the fact that the situation of national minorities was not among the areas covered by the report.

(Ministry of Justice/MTI)