According to Balázs Orbán, Parliamentary and Strategic State Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office, the European Union is heading for a fall due to the absolutisation and politicisation of the rule of law, human rights and the principle of democracy.

At the conference held in Budapest on Friday under the title The power structure of EU juristocracy and the EP elections, Mr Orbán said that the EU is facing a “trilemma”. The rule of law, human rights and democracy are three principles without which an international community organised under a charter cannot live, but “if we seek to implement these three all at once, and in an absolute manner, that conveys the threat of a breakdown in the system,” he said.

In his view if we seek to achieve the absolutisation of the rule of law and human rights “in the system” at once, and if additionally, we seek to fully comply with the circumstances of democracy, then “a system which is built on the totality of these three principles will collapse. This is exactly the direction the European Union is heading in today,” Mr Orbán said.

He stressed that it is the mentioned three principles upon which European cooperation must be based. However, the absolutisation and politicisation of the three principles will eventually lead not to the reinforcement of the stability of the system, but will cause the system to break down. It is this dysfunction that we should turn our attention to, “we must set the alarm bells ringing,” the state secretary added.

Mr Orbán argued that one may observe in debates related to the EU that there is no way of knowing what the European concept of the rule of law entails, it cannot be defined on the basis of an objective method, and we are therefore unable to enforce it in a uniform manner via the Member States. The situation is similar also as regards human rights: “the absolutisation and over-politicisation” of fundamental rights will eventually undermine the human rights system which was created for defending first-generation fundamental rights and freedoms. Additionally, the attempts made in recent decades to extend European democracy have achieved the opposite effect: a number of examples show that in reference to the protection of democracy, in actual fact, democracy – which represents the principle of the majority – is being undermined.

Member of the European Parliament for Fidesz József Szájer highlighted at the conference that in almost every area of the functioning of the EU one may perceive the coming into being of a mechanism which clearly attempts to pull the system towards “a politically unfounded” federalism.

The politician outlined a multiple-point proposal for changing the system. These proposals feature the elimination of the principle of “an ever closer union”, respect for the equality of Member States, the removal of political bias from EU institutions, and the reinforcement of national constitutional systems.

The conference was organised by the Faculty of Science of Public Governance and Administration of the National University of Public Service.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)