In answer to questions from foreign journalists in Brussels on Friday, the second day of the summit of the European Union’s heads of state and government, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that Hungary does not like double standards, and therefore does not support them being applied to anyone, including Poland.

He said that he considers it unfair that double standards are being applied to Poland. Double standards mean that someone is called to account for something not expected from others, the Prime Minister said. “More respect to Poland! This is the Hungarian position”, he added.

In his reply to questions from foreign journalists, Mr. Orbán was responding to a report on Friday by the Polish television news channel TVN24, which claimed that before the EU summit the Hungarian prime minister stood up for Polish prime minister Beata Szydło, who had been criticised by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament.

TVN24 reported that when the leaders of the Member States met, Mr. Schulz delivered a speech which included a reference to the crisis surrounding the Polish Constitutional Court. Apparently he voiced at length his concerns about the current situation, and then demanded full implementation of recommendations in last week’s report on Poland by the Venice Commission (an advisory body of the Council of Europe which deals with constitutional law).

According to the Polish news channel, following this speech Mr. Orbán defended Poland. The channel quoted the Hungarian prime minister as saying that “If we criticise those states with provisions regulating the functioning of their constitutional courts, perhaps we should also criticise countries where there is no constitutional court at all”.

In the opinion of the Venice Commission, both current and former governments are equally responsible for the crisis related to the Polish Constitutional Court, and the Commission therefore called upon the parties in the dispute to implement the rulings of the Warsaw Constitutional Court and seek a domestic political compromise.

At the initiative of the main Polish opposition force Civic Platform, the European People’s Party (EPP) is preparing to submit a draft resolution to the European Parliament in April, urging Poland to implement the Venice Commission’s recommendations.

(MTI)