18 March 2013
Days ago, an editorial in the Financial Times (FT) called on Hungary to be sanctioned by the European Union. Hungary’s ‘crime’ was to continue to remodel its constitution in ways which liberal opinion in Europe felt to be inappropriate. The FT claimed that such moves were an ‘assault on European values’.
This weekend, a true assault on European values has just taken place in Europe and the victim this time was Cyprus. The European Commission and European Central Bank have ripped up their own rules guaranteeing depositors bank savings and forced Cyprus into taxing bank deposits in return for a financial bailout. Such a move borders on the criminal and might even create contagion in the Eurozone.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has long since challenged Brussels view of the world as being incompatible with sovereign democracy. Perhaps after this weekend’s goings on in Nicosia, people in Hungary might start to listen to him.
For some time now, Orbán and Fidesz have tried to stress the importance of having a Hungarian approach to solving its economic problems. The political opposition, especially Attila Mesterházy and Gordon Bajnai, think the opposite and that Hungary must remain fully integrated into the so-called ‘European Way’. It has to be said that the opposition have little or no faith in the Hungarian people finding a way to live, which embraces their culture, traditions and best interests. It has to be a European way. It is a liberal fallacy that there is only one way to progress and the EU is it!
Seriously, how can the EU complain about Hungary’s taxation on banking profits when the EU has done the same on individual savings with absolutely no consultation or democratic mandate? How can Brussels lecture Orbán’s government on democratic accountability when it clearly has no democratic mandate and little accountability?
The rape of Cyprus this weekend will hasten the demise of the European dream.