The EU’s War on Democracy in Europe

The EU is a profoundly undemocratic institution and naturally hostile to democracy. How else can they keep Europe subject to Germany?

From The European Conservative

By Mick Hume

It might seem a stretch for the EU to claim to be defending democracy by denying the right of sovereign nations to decide their own policies. But in Brussels doublespeak, ‘democracy’ can now mean its opposite.

The European Union proudly boasts that it is “defending democracy in Europe” by standing with Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Try telling that to Hungary and Poland. The EU is waging its own political war on democracy in those member states, behind the false flag of the ‘rule of law.’ And Brussels is now launching its own spring offensive.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this conflict is only a problem for the conservative governments concerned. Democracy in Europe is on the line. Those who do nothing when the EU autocrats come for Viktor Orbán will have nobody but themselves to blame when it’s their turn.

Brussels’ big battalions have just lobbed two heavy shells at Poland. First, the European Court of Justice ruled against the Polish government, declaring that the ruling Law and Justice party’s judicial reforms break Europe’s rules. Then the European Commission announced that it is suing the Polish government again, over its new law against Russian interference in its domestic politics. Poland faces potential fines of hundreds of millions of Euros.

Hungary too is in the EU’s sights again. The European Parliament, the supposed democratic face of the EU, is plotting to stage an unconstitutional coup against the Fidesz government. 

The Parliament just overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that Hungary be stripped of the European Council presidency for violating EU values. EU rules state that the Council presidency rotates among member states every six months; Hungary is due to take the chair for the second half of 2024, to be followed by that other pariah state, Poland. Both left- and right-wing groups of MEPs are apparently prepared to rewrite the rules to stop that from happening. 

This conflict has flared up against the background of Brussels’ ongoing blackmail of Budapest, with Hungary being robbed of billions in funding as punishment for its refusal to toe the EU line on issues from migration to sex education.

It might seem a stretch for the EU to claim to be defending democracy by denying the right of sovereign nations to decide their own policies. But in Brussels doublespeak, ‘democracy’ can now mean its opposite: the attempt to impose policies and values from the centre, even against the expressed will of the electorate. For the EU bureaucracy, democracy is all about the kratos—control—without the demos—the people.

Dutch MEP Thijs Reuten (S&D group) even announced last week (presumably with a straight face) that the EU must act to prevent Orbán from assuming the Council presidency because “Hungary is no longer a democracy!” That will be news to the millions of Hungarian voters who re-elected Fidesz in a landslide victory last year. 

What the likes of Reuten mean, of course, is that Hungary is the ‘wrong’ kind of democracy, one with a conservative government determined to do what it was elected to do: uphold the Hungarian people’s traditional beliefs in the nation, the family, and Christian values. 

That is why an MEP such as Isabel Wiseler-Lima (EPP) insists that Orban simply cannot be allowed to be “the face of the European Union” by sitting atop the Council table. His face doesn’t fit because he won’t go along with the ‘EU values’ that Brussels elites seek to impose on Europe from the top down, insisting on blind acceptance of a supra-national state, multiculturalism, and transgender ideology.

The idea of democracy has become so degraded in EU circles that we have even seen Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council, emerge as the leader of the pro-Brussels opposition Civic Platform in Poland. To hear this inveterate Eurocrat making big speeches about democracy would be funny if it were not so serious. 

Tusk told a recent anti-government rally that they were ready “like 40 or 30 years ago, to fight for democracy, for Poland, and our rights.” This Tusk is the same anti-democrat who, we Brits recall, branded our referendum on EU membership ‘stupid’ and then, when his Remainer allies lost the democratic vote to Leave (because us voters were stupid, of course), he bitterly declared that he hoped there would be “a special place in hell” for those who fought for Brexit. 

Tusk’s attempt to compare current events with the struggle to free Poland and Eastern Europe from Soviet domination was particularly odious. If anybody bears comparison with the Kremlin today it is surely those trying to impose EU diktat on Poles from a foreign capital, albeit using court orders rather than tanks.

But no, the EU insists, we are not attacking democracy in Hungary or Poland; we are simply upholding the rule of law. The rule of law is indeed an important concept, one of the foundations of a civilised society. It depends, however, on separating the legal system from political power. Instead, in recent years, EU leaders have wielded the rule of law as a political weapon against unruly member states.

EU institutions now deploy the rule-of-law argument as a way of shifting political differences over values and culture out of the court of public opinion and into the courtroom. Once they invoke Article 7 of the EU treaty and declare a dispute with member states to be a rule-of-law issue, they mean it is effectively beyond debate and all must obey. After all, only criminals break the law, right? Thus the EU can use the rule of law as a shield behind which to fight its political war.

It turns out, however, that the rule-of-law zealots are not quite as keen on playing by the rules as the label might suggest. When the Parliament demanded that Hungary be barred from heading the council, MEPs had to admit that there was no formal way to make that happen. But who cares? As French Green Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield admitted, they would need “to invent” a solution. “But that’s also what we’ve been doing on Article 7 procedures from the first day.” So, they have not exactly been playing by the book. Instead, as in all dirty wars, they make up the rules as they go along to suit their war aims.

As Dutch MEP Sophie in t’Veld insists, “It’s about time we started to play hardball” with Hungary. Really? “About time”? Last year Brussels withheld 7.5 billion euros of funding until Hungary complied with 17 special measures. When a compromise seemed possible, the EU upped the stakes again and demanded the Fidesz government bend the knee to 27 new ‘super measures.’ Hungarians could be forgiven for wondering what game the Eurocrats have been playing until now if not hardball.

It is not simply that they don’t want Orbán to be “the face of the EU.” They don’t want these elected conservative governments to be the face of their own nations! That is why they are working hard to undermine them, with help from the United States. The international plotters failed to defeat Fidesz in Hungary last year. Now they have turned their attention to the forthcoming Polish elections, hoping that branding the government as outlaws might help Tusk & Co. to get rid of Law and Justice.

Let’s be clear. The big issue here for all the peoples of Europe is not any particular law passed by the governments in Hungary, Poland, Romania, or elsewhere. What’s at stake is the future of European democracy itself. 

Anybody can disagree with policies or laws. Debate or oppose them all you like. But that debate will be of no consequence unless people have sovereign control over their country and are free to elect a democratic government of their own choosing. Nothing else will matter unless national democracy can be secured. This is why we should rally to defend any nation when it is under attack.

History proves that a sovereign nation state is the only workable basis for a democracy in which citizens have a degree of control. Anything else, however it is dressed up as Europe-wide democracy or even global democracy, can only mean a tyranny of technocrats, courts, and committee types at the EU or the UN.

In that sense, some of us might think that Mr. Orbán would make quite a good face of Europe; a democratic Europe of sovereign nation states, where imposing the ‘rule of law’ is not a means of denying the rule of the people.