Orban Blinks to Avoid Expulsion From European Mainstream
Orban Shelves Court Overhaul Plan That Sparked EU Backlash
(Bloomberg) -- Hungary’s nationalist prime minister unexpectedly suspended a plan to carve up the country’s supreme court as he scrambles to avoid expulsion from the European political mainstream.
The climbdown by Viktor Orban’s government was announced by a senior minister Thursday. It came after his victory in European Union parliamentary elections was eclipsed by centrist parties closing ranks against a nationalist surge that failed to post enough gains to shift the bloc's direction.
That left the Hungarian leader’s illiberal agenda particularly vulnerable, despite his winning by the biggest landslide in the world’s largest multi-state voting event. It also seriously dented his effort to mount a cross-border challenge against the EU’s liberal and multi-cultural foundations.
“This is unexpected and important and aimed squarely at trying to salvage Orban’s position in the European People’s Party,” said Peter Kreko, director of the Political Capital think tank in Budapest. “Orban is trying to head off a backlash from Europe.”
Orban had leveraged membership in the EPP, the EU’s largest political family, as well as its reluctance to ostracize a fellow member, to stifle scrutiny from abroad while he consolidated power and throttled dissent at home.
But the position of his Fidesz party was put in jeopardy after the EPP suspended its membership in March for eroding the rule of law. On Tuesday, Orban’s leverage slipped further when a senior member of French President Emmanuel Macron’s party said the EU’s Liberals would only form a coalition with the EPP if it expelled Orban.
The about-face comes at a crucial time as Hungary, like Poland, faces proceedings for suspected violations of democratic norms and calls to cut EU funding for rule-of-law violators.
The government’s decision hit at what many observers said would have put Hungary’s democratic backsliding beyond the point of no return by extending the premier’s influence over judges in crucial cases.
Orban’s lawmakers had already in December stripped the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction in public administration cases, including elections and corruption, and voted to bring it under a parallel top court in 2020 under the influence of Orban’s justice minister. The cabinet has now vowed to indefinitely delay the plan, said Gergely Gulyas, the minister in charge of the prime minister’s office.
“This helps the country’s position in the European Union,” Gulyas told reporters.
It appeared to be a calculated move to protect Orban’s consolidation of power rather than a first step to reverse it. He has pushed through a new constitution over opposition protests, redrew the electoral map to favor his party, built Europe’s biggest propaganda machine, clamped down on civil society and stacked independent institutions with allies.
The supreme court’s chief justice was also forced from office and other judges were pushed into retirement early, a move Europe’s top court ruled illegal. Gulyas said those changes would stand.
Still, Thursday’s reversal showed that the EU retained some measure of leverage over renegade leaders. Orban’s senior minister all-but ruled out closer cooperation with Italian populist leader Matteo Salvini in the European Parliament, abandoning a vision Orban had pursued before the election as being at the heart of the mainstream’s embrace of radicals.
“We’ve been warning from the get-go about the dangers of the new court system,” the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a rights watchdog, said in a statement. The decision to put it on ice is a success “because there’s still a chance to retain the independence of the courts.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Zoltan Simon in Budapest at zsimon@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey, Andrea Dudik
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