Viktor Orbán’s choice for EU commissioner faces 'rough ride'

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/08/viktor-orban-eu-commissioner-rough-ride-laszlo-trocsanyi-hungary

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Viktor Orbán’s choice for Hungary’s EU commissioner faces “a very rough ride” in the European parliament, as MEPs warned that the Hungarian government’s record on the rule of law could not be ignored.

The nominee, László Trócsányi, described as an executor of Orbán’s will, was Hungary’s justice minister from 2014 until elected to the European parliament in May.

An architect of plans for Hungary’s new system of courts, widely criticised for limiting the powers of the judiciary, Trócsányi’s record in Hungary’s nationalist government looks set to complicate his path to the commission’s Berlaymont headquarters.

As justice minister, Trócsányi introduced a series of laws that triggered legal conflicts with the European commission he now seeks to join. He oversaw laws criminalising NGOs for helping refugees and setting up Hungary’s container camps for asylum seekers, as well as measures that led to the Central European University being forced to quit Budapest.

His nomination offers an early test for the incoming commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who is to unveil her team on Tuesday.

The Dutch MEP Sophie in ’t Veld, who sits on the parliament’s civil liberties and home affairs committee, told the Guardian the nomination was “intended as a provocation”.

“Quite frankly, given the track record of this government and this minister, it seems purely hypothetical he will ever pass the basic test,” she said referring to the EU’s fundamental values on rule of law. “How can we put someone in charge who does not respect or recognise the treaties?

“It is my expectation that he will get a very rough ride in parliament.”

Every member state has nominated a commissioner, except the UK, which is due to leave the EU the day before the new commission takes office.

EU commissioners are not meant to represent their governments, but often play an informal role, both as a back channel to the capital, and in promoting national approaches to economics and foreign policy in Brussels.

Trócsányi, who said he had had “constructive” talks with Von der Leyen, was rumoured to be interested in taking charge of EU policy on enlargement or foreign policy towards neighbouring countries. But the latest speculation suggested he could be put in charge of the EU’s aid budget.

“If that is true, it would be a surprising, indeed highly alarming choice by Mrs von der Leyen,” In ‘t Veld said. “The portfolio of humanitarian aid includes issues like sexual and reproductive health, including abortion. An arch-conservative commissioner at the helm will have devastating consequences for the lives of countless women and girls.”

The German Social Democrat Birgit Sippel said she was “not happy” with the Hungarian’s nomination, adding that a foreign policy portfolio would be a problem. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to give him a profile on migration, on home affairs, on justice, so that is something we have to focus on.”

The parliament’s political groups will start discussing the nominees this week, but have yet to reach collective views.

The Von der Leyen commission can only take office if all commissioners win MEPs’ approval in a vote, following individual hearings. Usually one or two commissioners are rejected by the parliament, as MEPs seek to exert their power.

The confrontation between MEPs and Trócsányi looks set to unfold as EU ministers open discussions later this month on whether Orbán’s government is in breach of the rule of law – following the unprecedented decision by the parliament to trigger the EU’s most serious disciplinary procedure.

The rumbling discontent echoes a similar row over Orbán’s last European commissioner nominee, Tibor Navracsics, also a former Hungarian justice minister.

Born in 1963 in Székesfehérvár in central Hungary, Viktor Orbán has been leader of the Fidesz national conservative party in two long stints since 1993. He has been Hungary’s prime minister between 1998 and 2002, and again since 2010. After two years of military service he studied law in Budapest, and then political science at Pembroke College, Oxford.

For nationalists across Europe, Orbán has become a hero, the embodiment of a nativist leader willing to eschew liberal political correctness and speak aggressively about the need to defend so-called Christian Europe. Steve Bannon has called him Trump before Trump, and Nigel Farage and Italy’s Matteo Salvini are admirers.

For many liberals, and increasingly for some of his supposed allies in the EPP, he signifies all that is rotten, corrupt and downright scary in contemporary politics on the continent.

“The age of liberal democracy is at an end,” Orbán told the Hungarian parliament shortly after Fidesz won a third successive electoral victory in 2018. “It is no longer able to protect people’s dignity, provide freedom, guarantee physical security or maintain Christian culture.”

His messaging, repeated in speeches and interviews ad nauseam, is that he is on a mission to protect Hungary and the rest of Europe from the evils of migration from the Middle East and Africa. He has frequently accused the Hungarian-born financier George Soros of a conspiracy to overrun Europe with Muslim migrants.

Orbán’s Fidesz party has a two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament, which gives him leeway to make sweeping constitutional changes, and he has spoken of a plan to reshape the country over the next decade. He has installed loyalists in previously independent institutions, put a vast media network under the control of cronies and brushed off protests from the disgruntled urban elites.

One thing Orbán’s admirers and detractors agree on is that he has become symbolic of something bigger than the fate of a smallish central European state with a population of fewer than 10 million. The man himself clearly relishes his increasingly large role in European political discourse.

Frustrated with Brussels and other European critics, Orbán has built alliances with neighbouring countries, notably throughout the V4, which comprises Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, all of whose leaders have at times expressed varying degrees of unhappiness with the EU, and whose unity in messaging is growing.

For Orbán, the idea that he is up against an exhausted, decaying vision of Europe is one that he has returned to again and again in his speeches. In October 2018, he implicitly compared today’s EU to the Nazis, Soviets and other imperial powers.

Shaun Walker in Budapest

Awarded the low-profile portfolio of education, culture, youth and sport, Navracsics had to walk a tightrope between Brussels and Budapest.

“It’s very difficult to operate in a situation where everyone in Brussels and everyone in Budapest is waiting for the slightest sign where they can say you have betrayed them,” said one diplomatic source. “A lot of people in Budapest were saying he had become a brainwashed liberal, whereas right from the beginning he faced a hostile environment in the commission.”

As his possible successor, Trócsányi will face the same scepticism from both sides. The former diplomat is not seen as a close ally of Orbán: “He is an extremely talented expert, a professional executor and legal framer of Orbán’s will,” the source said. “And I think that is how Orbán looks at him, as a legal tool.”

Trócsányi said he was “delighted that president-elect Ursula von der Leyen considers me in her future team. It is a great honour.” He declined to comment on the criticism from the MEPs, or his portfolio.