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Monthly Archives: July 2020

Poland should not withdraw from Istanbul Convention: Council of Europe chief

Poland should not withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, an international treaty that aims to stop violence against women, the head of human rights body the Council of Europe has said in response to announcements by officials in Warsaw.

Marija Pejčinović Burić said in a statement on Sunday that “announcements by government officials that Poland should withdraw from the Istanbul Convention are alarming.”

She added that “the Istanbul Convention is the Council of Europe‘s key international treaty to combat violence against women and domestic violence – and that is its sole objective.”

“If there are any misconceptions or misunderstandings about the Convention, we are ready to clarify them in a constructive dialogue,” Pejčinović Burić, who is secretary-general of the Council of Europe, said.

“Leaving the Istanbul Convention would be highly regrettable and a major step backwards in the protection of women against violence in Europe,” she also said.

Pejčinović Burić made her statement after Poland’s Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced a day earlier that the country was set to take steps to leave the European domestic violence treaty, state news agency PAP reported.

Ziobro told reporters on Saturday that the document contained “ideological provisions” that Poland’s ruling conservatives “do not accept and consider harmful.”

He added that Poland’s own legal system, reshaped by the country’s ruling conservatives in recent years, provided sufficient protection for women.

The Council of Europe is a 47-nation international organisation that aims to promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

(27. 7. 2020 via thenews.pl)

zbigniew_ziobro_2016-03-03_0

Posted in European cooperation |

Maas: Germany against US push to let Russia back into G7

US President Donald Trump had suggested reintroducing Russia into the G7 last month. However, Moscow first needs to take greater efforts in solving the conflict in Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has said.

Germany has rejected a proposal floated by US President Donald Trump to allow Russia back into the Group of Seven (G7) most advanced economies, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in an interview published Monday.

“The reason for Russia’s exclusion was the annexation of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine,” he told the Rheinische Post newspaper. “As long as we do not have a solution there, I see no chance for this.”

Russia was expelled from the G7 in 2014 after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region.

‘Don’t need’ more members

“Russia itself can make the biggest contribution to reopening such doors,” Maas said, urging the Kremlin to do more to overcome the conflict.

“The G7 and G20 are two sensibly coordinated formats,” the minister added. The G20 is the larger gathering of the world’s most industrialized countries which still includes Russia.

“We don’t need G11 or G12,” Maas said.

A role for Russia

Still, Maas said Russia remains important to the G7.

“We also know that we need Russia in order solve conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Ukraine,” Maas said.

He called on Russia to do its part in Ukraine, saying that Moscow had been slow to act there.

The foreign minister also criticized Russia for preventing the arrival of humanitarian aid to 1.5 million people in Syria.

“Russia is in control of how it is perceived,” Maas said.

(26. 7. 2020 via dw.com)

2017-03-26_Heiko_Maas_by_Sandro_Halank–4

Posted in European cooperation, Transatlantic relations |

Officials Push U.S.-China Relations Toward Point of No Return

Top aides to President Trump want to leave a lasting legacy of ruptured ties between the two powers. China’s aggression has been helping their cause.

Step by step, blow by blow, the United States and China are dismantling decades of political, economic and social engagement, setting the stage for a new era of confrontation shaped by the views of the most hawkish voices on both sides.

With President Trump trailing badly in the polls as the election nears, his national security officials have intensified their attack on China in recent weeks, targeting its officials, diplomats and executives. While the strategy has reinforced a key campaign message, some American officials, worried Mr. Trump will lose, are also trying to engineer irreversible changes, according to people familiar with the thinking.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has inflamed the fight, brushing aside international concern about the country’s rising authoritarianism to consolidate his own political power and to crack down on basic freedoms, from Xinjiang to Hong Kong. By doing so, he has hardened attitudes in Washington, fueling a clash that at least some in China believe could be dangerous to the country’s interests.

The combined effect could prove to be Mr. Trump’s most consequential foreign policy legacy, even if it’s not one he has consistently pursued: the entrenchment of a fundamental strategic and ideological confrontation between the world’s two largest economies.

A state of broad and intense competition is the end goal of the president’s hawkish advisers. In their view, confrontation and coercion, aggression and antagonism should be the status quo with the Chinese Communist Party, no matter who is leading the United States next year. They call it “reciprocity.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared in a speech on Thursday that the relationship should be based on the principle of “distrust and verify,” saying that the diplomatic opening orchestrated by President Richard M. Nixon nearly half a century ago had ultimately undermined American interests.

“We must admit a hard truth that should guide us in the years and decades to come: that if we want to have a free 21st century, and not the Chinese century of which Xi Jinping dreams, the old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t get it done,” Mr. Pompeo said. “We must not continue it and we must not return to it.”

The events of the last week brought relations to yet another low, accelerating the downward spiral.

On Tuesday, the State Department ordered China to shut down its Houston consulate, prompting diplomats there to burn documents in a courtyard. On Friday, in retaliation, China ordered the United States to close its consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu. The Chinese Foreign Ministry the next day denounced what it called “forced entry” into the Houston consulate by U.S. law enforcement officers on Friday afternoon.

In between, the Department of Justice announced criminal charges against four members of the People’s Liberation Army for lying about their status in order to operate as undercover intelligence operatives in the United States. All four have been arrested. One, Tang Juan, who was studying at the University of California, Davis, ignited a diplomatic standoff when she sought refuge in the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, but was taken into custody on Thursday night.

This comes on top of a month in which the administration announced sanctions on senior Chinese officials, including a member of the ruling Politburo, over the mass internment of Muslims; revoked the special status of Hong Kong in diplomatic and trade relations; and declared that China’s vast maritime claims in the South China Sea were illegal.

The administration has also imposed a travel ban on Chinese students at graduate level or higher with ties to military institutions in China. Officials are discussing whether to do the same to members of the Communist Party and their families, a sweeping move that could put 270 million people on a blacklist.

“Below the president, Secretary Pompeo and other members of the administration appear to have broader goals,” said Ryan Hass, a China director on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council who is now at the Brookings Institution.

“They want to reorient the U.S.-China relationship toward an all-encompassing systemic rivalry that cannot be reversed by the outcome of the upcoming U.S. election,” he said. “They believe this reorientation is needed to put the United States on a competitive footing against its 21st-century geostrategic rival.”

From the start, Mr. Trump has vowed to change the relationship with China, but mainly when it comes to trade. Early this year, the negotiated truce in the countries’ trade war was hailed by some aides as a signature accomplishment. That deal is still in effect, though hanging by a thread, overshadowed by the broader fight.

Beyond China, few of the administration’s foreign policy goals have been fully achieved. Mr. Trump’s personal diplomacy with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, has done nothing to end the country’s nuclear weapons program.

His withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has further alienated allies and made that country’s leaders even more belligerent. His effort to change the government in Venezuela failed. His promised withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan has yet to occur.

In Beijing, some officials and analysts have publicly dismissed many of the Trump administration’s moves as campaign politics, accusing Mr. Pompeo and others of promoting a Cold War mentality to score points for an uphill re-election fight. There is a growing recognition, though, that the conflict’s roots run deeper.

The breadth of the administration’s campaign has vindicated those in China — and possibly Mr. Xi himself — who have long suspected that the United States will never accept the country’s growing economic and military might, or its authoritarian political system.

“It’s not just electoral considerations,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor at the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. “It is also a natural escalation and a result of the inherent contradictions between China and the United States.”

Already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, some Chinese officials have sought to avoid open conflict with the United States. They have urged the Trump administration to reconsider each of its actions and called for cooperation, not confrontation, albeit without offering significant concessions of their own.

“With global anti-China sentiment at its highest level in decades, Chinese officials have indicated an interest in exploring potential offramps to the current death spiral in U.S.-China relations,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, a political scientist at Cornell University who studies Chinese foreign policy and public opinion.

“Beijing isn’t spoiling for an all-out fight with the United States,” she said, “but at a minimum the Chinese government will retaliate to show the world — and a prospective Biden administration — that China won’t be intimidated or pushed around.”

Given the size of each nation’s economy and their entwinement, there are limits to the unwinding of relations, or what some Trump officials call “decoupling.” In the United States, tycoons and business executives, who exercise enormous sway among politicians of both parties, will continue to push for a more moderate approach, as members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet who represent Wall Street interests have done. China is making leaps in science, technology and education that Americans and citizens of other Western nations will want to share in. In his Thursday speech, even Mr. Pompeo acknowledged, “China is deeply integrated into the global economy.”

Only two weeks ago, the foreign minister, Wang Yi, called on the United States to step back from confrontation and work with China. In reality, officials in Beijing appear resigned to the likelihood that nothing will change for the better before next year.

“There is very little China can do to take the initiative,” said Wu Qiang, an independent analyst in Beijing. “It has very few proactive options.”

Mr. Trump whipsaws in his language on China. He has called Mr. Xi “a very, very good friend” and even privately encouraged him to keep building mass internment camps for Muslims and handle the Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters his way, according to a new book by John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser. When he last spoke with Mr. Xi, he expressed “much respect!” on Twitter.

With the election looming, Mr. Trump’s tone has changed. He has returned to bashing China, as he did in 2016, blaming Beijing for the pandemic and even referring to the coronavirus with a racist phrase, “Kung Flu.” His campaign aides have made aggressive rhetoric on China a pillar of their strategy, believing it could help energize voters.

The heated language, combined with the administration’s policy actions, could actually be having a galvanizing effect on Chinese citizens, some analysts and political figures in Beijing say.

“I strongly urge American people to re-elect Trump because his team has many crazy members like Pompeo,” Hu Xijin, the editor of the nationalist newspaper Global Times, wrote on Twitter on Friday. “They help China strengthen solidarity and cohesion in a special way.”

The relationship might not change course even if former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. defeats Mr. Trump in November. The idea of orienting American policy toward competition with China has had robust bipartisan support over the last three-and-a-half years.

The Chinese government’s initial mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak and its actions in Hong Kong, which is widely seen as a beacon of liberal values within China, have been signal moments this year, contributing to the tectonic shift in views across the political spectrum.

The China hawks in the administration have seized on them to publicly push their perspective: that the Chinese Communist Party seeks to expand its ideology and authoritarian vision worldwide, and that citizens of liberal nations must wake up to the dangers and gird themselves for a conflict that could last for decades.

Since late June, the administration has rolled out four top officials to make that case.

Attorney General William P. Barr accused American companies of “corporate appeasement,” while Christopher Wray, the F.B.I. director, said his agency was opening a new China-related counterintelligence investigation every 10 hours.

Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, warned that the Chinese Communist Party aimed to remake the world in its image. “The effort to control thought beyond the borders of China is well underway,” he said.

Mr. Pompeo’s speech on Thursday was meant as the punctuation mark. He chose the presidential library of the man credited with opening up U.S.-China relations to declare the policy a failure.

“President Nixon once said he feared he had created a ‘Frankenstein’ by opening the world to the C.C.P.,” Mr. Pompeo said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, “and here we are.”

(25. 7. 2020 via nytimes.com)

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Posted in Transatlantic relations |

Index: More than 80 journalists resign from Hungarian news site after editor sacked

Thousands protested on the streets of Budapest after scores of journalists, including three leading editors, resigned from Hungary’s main independent news site, Index.

The announcement of the mass resignation comes just two days after the company’s editor-in-chief, Szabolcs Dull, was fired.

Employees had described the decision by the president of the board, László Bodolai, as “unacceptable”.

On Thursday, Index held a staff meeting to request the reinstatement of Dull, which was “categorically refused”.

In an open letter, journalists said the decision meant conditions for Index’s independent operation were no longer in place.

“His dismissal is a clear interference in the composition of our staff, and we cannot regard it any other way but as an overt attempt to apply pressure,” said Index journalists in a joint statement.

“The editorial board deemed that the conditions for independent operation are no longer in place and have initiated the termination of their employment.”

Index’ deputy editor-in-chief, Veronika Munk, told Euronews Hungary that Dull’s sacking was a direct reason for her decision to resign.

“The sacking of Szabolcs Dull was the step that made me think I can no longer do this job freely, following professional journalistic principles,” said Munk. “And I know that a lot of people among those who resigned think the same way.”

Thousands took to the streets of the Hungarian capital on Friday night in a planned rally in solidarity with Index.

“It’s obvious that there are political reasons behind what happened. Index was the last and only opposition media source that could criticise the government in front of big audience,” one demonstrator told Euronews.

Another protester said: “It is mandatory to have a free news outlet which can publish information about both political sides. It’s needed to have something like this. It’s not good that all the press is supported by the government.”

The website has long been a target of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who sought to exert more control over the country’s broadcast and media industry, according to Associated Press.

In recent weeks the company said it felt its independence was “in danger” from external forces.

In 2018, Index set up an “independence barometer” to monitor editorial freedoms, after a change in ownership which led to a loss of trust between staff and management.

Last month, the barometer was changed to “in danger” from “independent” after it was confronted by management plans to reorganise the newsroom, which the editorial staff strongly opposed.

Dull released a statement on Wednesday, saying he felt it was “no accident” that the editorial staff had felt endangered.

Index’s board said his dismissal was based on a failure to manage internal tensions and economic downturn.

Political journalist Daniel Renyi said he had expected mass resignations and sections of the newspaper to disappear.

He told Euronews that the firing of Szabolcs Dull was “devastating”.

“It’s very difficult to imagine a free Hungarian media market without the Index we know.”

“Next year there might be more pressure on Hungary and Orban thinks this is the proper time to gain more influence in the independent media market,” said Renyi.

Hungary is also in the midst of EU proceedings over concerns that they are violating legal standards that threaten the independence of judges and press freedoms.

European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová said she has “big concerns” and expressed support for Index employees.

(25. 7. 2020 via euronews.com)

Posted in Hungary from abroad - how others evaluate us |

EU Summit: Political Victory Goes to Central Europe, says Former EU Commissioner

Financially, the southern EU states, and politically, the Central European countries have achieved success at the recently concluded EU summit, former Fidesz MEP and EU Commissioner Tibor Navracsics said in an interview with InfoRádió on Tuesday.

“Few people, including me, would have thought that the current European Council would reach a decision on two extremely important issues, since both the sum and structure of the 7-year financial framework were disputed, not to mention the economic recovery package, which was under complete attack,” former Commissioner Tibor Navracsics said.

Navracsics considers the fact that an agreement was reached on both financial issues to be the most important outcome of the negotiations and it clearly shows that “everyone found the compromise to be acceptable.”

According to the politician, the majority now sees the scale of the funds to be acceptable, only the Frugal Five are uncertain of it, which is why they wanted to pull an emergency brake on the fund disbursement order against those who might not use the money properly.

Navracsics thinks that today’s Europe is much more fragmented than it used to be. There is a left-leaning majority in the EP, so financial debates can very easily drift into ideological disputes in the future, he said.

With the agreement, southern EU countries have escaped the threat of bankruptcy, thus they can be considered the greatest winners of the agreement financially but not politically, Navracsics emphasized.

It is the Central European region that achieved the most politically.

Hungary and Poland have fought out a good position by hinting for a veto in case the EU ties the rightfully due payouts to the rule of law criteria, Navracsics emphasized.

The former Commissioner considers the removal of the political conditions from the agreement and the additional 3 billion Euro subsidy included in the final deal a huge success for Hungary.

He is hopeful that the quick completion of the Article 7 proceedings promised by Germany against Hungary is not just a political gesture, but much more.

“The procedure was a process that was difficult to grasp and define from the beginning; it was initiated by the EP, the EC was only half-hearted about it, and did not believe that the procedure would lead to any results,” Navracsics explained.

The politician believes that the EU summit was an important step in the direction of the “emancipation” of Central Europe along Polish and Hungarian values ??and interests.

He does not think that Western European states are looking down on Central and Eastern European ones, but rather perceives a mutual misunderstanding- the East sees the West to be too soft and pliable, while the West thinks the East is too combative and uncouth.

(22. 7. 2020 via hungarytoday.hu)

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Posted in European cooperation |

Call for papers: Message from the Director or rather Questions from the Director

Dear friends and partners!

The Director of our Center tried to summarize some important details about the COVID-19 pandemic. He also raised some questions about this situation.

Unfortunately, our Center could not organise the annual summer seminar this year, therefore we tried to find a new way to  reach all of you and spread the basic idea of our Institute, namely thinking about our future, thinking about Europe and the World. Feel free to express your views, opinions or feelings about the pandemic! Fell free to react to the questions of the Director! Write us about your thoughts!

We hope you would like to participate in our online debate. We will post the best essays on our homepage, and we are going to invite the best writers to our online debate with our Director.

We are waiting for your comments, essays, thoughts etc. to peter.galambos@tihanypolitics.eu (Deadline: 31.8.2020)

Stay safe!

György Odze director

and the TEAM of the TCPA

 

The Virus

It was an unprecedented crisis though not unpredictable. For years health risks in China were a potential time-bomb for the whole world. It was only question of time and luck when would this blow in to our faces. The Hungarian political life – as a whole and as other nations as well– acted late and in a hurry. However, after a week of doing nothing Viktor Orbán realised that he can make an opportunity out of the crisis by showing his real face: the militant and strong leader who likes to be in the frontline or create his own frontline if necessary. He has a two-third majority in parliament which enables him to act as he pleases but this was not enough for him. He raised the „Emergency Situation” rifle which allowed him to rule by decree and he used it effectively against the „liberals”, the media and „people who spread rumours”. There was an incredible rise in importing Chinese stuff, including almost 20 thousand ventilators in secret deals.

However, other players of the political game could not benefit from the situation. Oppositon leadears had no idea how to handle the situation so at the end Fidesz could gain another victory – this time not at the polls but in the game of popularity figures.

The health risk might be over but nobody knows now how to handle the economic crisis, what will happen to those firms which collapsed and to those people who have lost their jobs. Not only is Hungary in danger now, but the world – which did not wakeup in time.

And China came out clean after all.

It is not over, but it might happen again.

 

*

The question now is: what’s next? Populist governments seem to survive and even profit from the crisis. „Virus” was an excellent, invisible enemy and the fight against it needed no explanation or excuse. Was it really so dangerous? Did it really take so many lives? Were the measures taken more than necessary? Was it justified that elderly people should stay at home isolated not only from the disease but also from their only connection to the world: their loved ones who were also their only help in everyday life? Were all measures justified? Is it a normal syndrome that cities were isolated from each other? Is it a normal phenomenon that people are arrested for „spreading rumours” through internet? Where is the border between human liberty and social danger?  Should certain measures, like wearing masks be compulsory or let each of us decide individually. Could the states finance the losses of companies by taxpayers money or let them try to survive alone? Were mistakes done by governments in trusting China? If yes, who and when? Are there any real moral or practical lesson to be learnt and will we really learn from it? Are we, each and everyone of us, more clever than we were before? Will this crisis change our lives? Do we really want this crisis to change our lives? I suppose that this is the most important question of all. To be strong and convinced enough to change – or be ready to change.

To see daily updates and how Covid-19 has spread, please check:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

Posted in News and events |

Zoltán Kovács: Look who’s talking about the “spread of disinformation” | View

“Democratically-elected leaders are increasingly fueling the spread of disinformation,” write Sohini Chatterjee and Péter Krekó in an opinion piece published by Euronews, including Hungary as one of their examples. While there may indeed be some countries on this planet where this claim would square with reality, Hungary is not one of them.

And it’s not one of them for a specific reason: in the last decade, and particularly during the last couple of months since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Hungary has been combating disinformation with hard facts, not spreading it. Meanwhile, Krekó and his fellow “experts” claim that Hungary is guilty of “state-sponsored disinformation.” However, they are engaged in more than a little disinformation of their own.

Krekó and Chatterjee claim, for example, that “Viktor Orbán has created the most centralised media empire ever within the European Union.” Interestingly, the very same notion appeared in an “independent country ranking” in April, financed by Bertelsmann Stiftung and drafted by an “independent network of country experts.” A closer look at the list of regional experts, however, revealed that out of 10 Hungarians, nine are from Political Capital — a leftist, liberal think tank based in Budapest.

This alleged state-sponsored disinformation in Western democracies is, Krekó and his co-author claim, “the elephant in the room.” The real elephant in the room is that people like Krekó continue to pass themselves off as independent experts on Hungary when in fact they are driving a political agenda and engaging in some serious misinformation themselves.

International spokesperson for the Cabinet Office of Hungarian prime minister
As the seasoned reader has probably already guessed by now, one of the founders of Political Capital is, in fact, the same Péter Krekó that we find behind this opinion piece. He founded the liberal think tank along with a former member of the Alliance of Free Democrats, a party that governed Hungary in a coalition with the Socialists until it lost all of its seats in parliament in 2010. What’s more, prior to 2010, Political Capital was awarded contracts worth hundreds of millions of forints to provide communications consulting services to the Socialist governments headed by Ferenc Gyurcsány and Gordon Bandai.

Hence, thoughtful readers would be making a huge mistake if they were to take Krekó’s claims at face value.

Take this statement, for example, that, “The Hungarian government and its media have also successfully blamed Iranian students in Hungary for the onset of the pandemic, falsely claiming that the primary source of the pandemic is illegal migration.” Let’s make something clear: while nobody blamed those Iranian students for anything, it’s a fact that they were the first few confirmed cases of coronavirus in Hungary. End of story.

Another claim that wildly misinformed the public concerned Hungary’s regulations against scaremongering and disseminating false information, laws that were in effect only during the state of emergency due to COVID-19. Central European governments, like Hungary, Krekó writes, “have passed harsher criminal punishment for media outlets that they claim are spreading ‘fake news.’” According to him, we did this “to silence critical voices.” (Note that he made the same statement in an interview with the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies in May.) That’s false. And here’s why.

The law in question introduced sanctions not for simply expressing one’s opinion but for very specific acts: the spread of false information and distortions that could undermine or thwart efforts to protect the public against the spread of the virus. The key qualifiers here are false information that essentially endangers lives, and there is plenty of precedent for such laws in Western democracies as well — and not only when operating under a state of emergency. The fact that our political opponents have failed to find a single case where one of our “critics” has been “silenced” makes our point for us.

Should you need more examples of the kind of disinformation these politically driven “experts” are spreading about the Hungarian government, the best place to look is the liberals’ orchestrated campaign against Hungary’s Coronavirus Protection Act, which gave the government – as with similar to measures in other countries – sweeping powers to protect the lives of our people and the economy.

“Democratically-elected leaders are increasingly fueling the spread of disinformation,” write Sohini Chatterjee and Péter Krekó in an opinion piece published by Euronews, including Hungary as one of their examples. While there may indeed be some countries on this planet where this claim would square with reality, Hungary is not one of them.

And it’s not one of them for a specific reason: in the last decade, and particularly during the last couple of months since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Hungary has been combating disinformation with hard facts, not spreading it. Meanwhile, Krekó and his fellow “experts” claim that Hungary is guilty of “state-sponsored disinformation.” However, they are engaged in more than a little disinformation of their own.

Krekó and Chatterjee claim, for example, that “Viktor Orbán has created the most centralised media empire ever within the European Union.” Interestingly, the very same notion appeared in an “independent country ranking” in April, financed by Bertelsmann Stiftung and drafted by an “independent network of country experts.” A closer look at the list of regional experts, however, revealed that out of 10 Hungarians, nine are from Political Capital — a leftist, liberal think tank based in Budapest.

This alleged state-sponsored disinformation in Western democracies is, Krekó and his co-author claim, “the elephant in the room.” The real elephant in the room is that people like Krekó continue to pass themselves off as independent experts on Hungary when in fact they are driving a political agenda and engaging in some serious misinformation themselves.

International spokesperson for the Cabinet Office of Hungarian prime minister
As the seasoned reader has probably already guessed by now, one of the founders of Political Capital is, in fact, the same Péter Krekó that we find behind this opinion piece. He founded the liberal think tank along with a former member of the Alliance of Free Democrats, a party that governed Hungary in a coalition with the Socialists until it lost all of its seats in parliament in 2010. What’s more, prior to 2010, Political Capital was awarded contracts worth hundreds of millions of forints to provide communications consulting services to the Socialist governments headed by Ferenc Gyurcsány and Gordon Bandai.

Hence, thoughtful readers would be making a huge mistake if they were to take Krekó’s claims at face value.

Take this statement, for example, that, “The Hungarian government and its media have also successfully blamed Iranian students in Hungary for the onset of the pandemic, falsely claiming that the primary source of the pandemic is illegal migration.” Let’s make something clear: while nobody blamed those Iranian students for anything, it’s a fact that they were the first few confirmed cases of coronavirus in Hungary. End of story.

Another claim that wildly misinformed the public concerned Hungary’s regulations against scaremongering and disseminating false information, laws that were in effect only during the state of emergency due to COVID-19. Central European governments, like Hungary, Krekó writes, “have passed harsher criminal punishment for media outlets that they claim are spreading ‘fake news.’” According to him, we did this “to silence critical voices.” (Note that he made the same statement in an interview with the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies in May.) That’s false. And here’s why.

The law in question introduced sanctions not for simply expressing one’s opinion but for very specific acts: the spread of false information and distortions that could undermine or thwart efforts to protect the public against the spread of the virus. The key qualifiers here are false information that essentially endangers lives, and there is plenty of precedent for such laws in Western democracies as well — and not only when operating under a state of emergency. The fact that our political opponents have failed to find a single case where one of our “critics” has been “silenced” makes our point for us.

Should you need more examples of the kind of disinformation these politically driven “experts” are spreading about the Hungarian government, the best place to look is the liberals’ orchestrated campaign against Hungary’s Coronavirus Protection Act, which gave the government – as with similar to measures in other countries – sweeping powers to protect the lives of our people and the economy.

In a video conference in May, it was Krekó himself who sounded the alarm over the erosion of Hungarian democracy, claiming that prime minister, Viktor Orbán would rule by decree; others, including a former Finnish ambassador, would have had you believe that the Hungarian Parliament had been suspended. Of course, just like the many times we’ve had to face similar disinformation in the past, none of this was true.

Today, we know that while it certainly did not push Hungary into “authoritarian disarray,” the Coronavirus Protection Act served the country well. It enabled the government to take swift action to close borders, enact movement restrictions, slow the spread of the disease, and provide our national healthcare system and healthcare providers with the equipment necessary to treat all those who required care.

This alleged state-sponsored disinformation in Western democracies is, Krekó and his co-author claim, “the elephant in the room.” The real elephant in the room is that people like Krekó continue to pass themselves off as independent experts on Hungary when in fact they are driving a political agenda and engaging in some serious misinformation themselves. And, of course, that countless mainstream media outlets continue to let them get away with it.

Zoltán Kovács is Secretary of State for International Communication and Relations and International spokesperson for the Cabinet Office of Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán

(20. 7. 2020 via euronews.com)

Posted in Hungary from abroad - how others evaluate us |

EU leaders reach deal on coronavirus recovery package

After marathon talks, EU member states have agreed to a historic coronavirus recovery deal. Disagreements concerning access to the aid package had turned the negotiations into one of the bloc’s longest-ever summits.

EU leaders agreed early Tuesday to an unprecedented €1.8 trillion ($2 trillion) aid and budget deal aimed at helping hard-hit bloc members recover from the economic fallout of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The package includes a €750-billion fund to be sent as loans and grants, as well as a seven-year €1 trillion EU budget.

European Council President Charles Michel tweeted a brief message minutes after leaders adopted the plan: “Deal!”

“We did it. Europe is strong, Europe is united. This is a good deal, this is a strong deal and most importantly this is the right deal for Europe right now,” Michel said. “I believe this agreement will be seen as a pivotal moment for Europe’s journey.”

The breakthrough comes after more than four days of wrangling, with talks often stretching into the early hours.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen thanked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for “steering” negotiations towards a European solution.

“Europe as a whole has now a big change to come out stronger from the crisis. Today we have taken a historic step that we can all be proud of,” said von der Leyen. “Tonight is a big step toward recovery.”

Merkel described the agreement as an “important signal,” and said she was “very relieved” that EU leaders were able to cooperate. It was good “that we pulled ourselves together in the end,” she said.

That sentiment was echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who called it a “historic day for Europe.”

“There is no such thing as a perfect world, but we have made progress,” said Macron.

However, the European Parliament will still have to agree to the package.

Terms of the package

The package includes the biggest-ever joint borrowing by the 27 members of the bloc, and an initiative to send tens of billions of euros to countries hardest hit by the virus — most notably heavily indebted Spain and Italy, which had both called for major financial assistance from the EU.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez hailed “a Marshall Plan for Europe,” that would see €140 billion sent to Spain over the next six years.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said that Italy was “satisfied” with the results of the plan, which would see 28% of the total funds, or €209 billion directed towards Italy. That figure includes €81 billion in grants and €127 billion in loans.

“We are satisfied with the approval of an ambitious relaunch plan, which will allow us to confront the crisis with strength and effectiveness,” said Conte.

Greece will also receive €72 billion under the plan, in a move that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis caled a “national success.”

He said the funds would be disbursed carefully in Greece with meticulous planning.

“We have no intention of spreading the money around with the carefree attitude of the nouveau-riche,” Mitsotakis said. “We have no intention of wasting this significant European capital now at our disposal. We will invest it to the benefit of all Greeks.”

To meet the concerns fo the so-called frugal four — the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Sweden — which see Italy and Spain as being too lax with public spending, the assistance includes a number of conditions and major strings attached. The southern countries had previously called for conditionless financial assistance, without additional obligations.

The frugals also won heavy rebates on their EU contributions. The deal additionally allows for the distribution of €360 billion in loans, repayable by the receiving member state, and €390 billion in the form of grants to pandemic-hit countries — a lower figure than the initial €500-billion grant proposal made by France and Germany.

Days of haggling

Negotiations were bogged down by major disagreements concerning grants, loans and whether economic and financial reforms should dictate access to the funds. The 27 member states had been largely divided into two camps. Germany and France spearheaded efforts to collectivize debt in order to raise much-needed funds for countries such as Italy and Spain, which bore the brunt of the pandemic in the EU.

In the other camp, the frugal four, together with Finland had called for a strings-attached approach that would have made access to funds conditional on tough market reforms.

That camp also support stringent measures that would have blocked funding for countries that did not adhere to EU rules on the rule of law. That could have jeopardized funding for countries such as Hungary and Poland who are the target of a European Commission investigation over rule of law violations.

EU nations have struggled to coordinate a response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed some 135,000 lives on the continent. The bloc’s economy is projected to contract by 8.3% this year.

(21. 7. 2020 via dw.com)

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Posted in European cooperation |

Gov’t reshuffle in Poland after summer break: conservative leader

Poland’s government is likely to undergo a reshuffle after the summer vacations, the country’s conservative leader has said.

In an interview with public broadcaster Polish Radio, Jarosław Kaczyński said: “I believe this will happen directly after the holidays.”

He added that “there will certainly be personnel changes,” but, despite media speculation, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki would keep his job as head of government.

“The prime minister will stay on, but the government will be restructured so as to eliminate a situation in which some decisions have to go through several different ministries,” Kaczyński told Polish Radio on Sunday.

He indicated that the bottom line was to make the decision-making process within the government less “dispersed” and more efficient.

Kaczyński, who heads Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, did not name any Cabinet ministers who could be replaced.

Kaczyński’s party last fall secured a second term in power, together with two smaller right-wing groupings, in the wake of parliamentary elections.

Meanwhile, the country’s conservative President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the government, this month won a runoff vote and was re-elected for another five years as head of state.

(20. 7. 2020 via thenews.pl)

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Posted in European cooperation |

Explainer: Why is Bulgaria engulfed in daily anti-government protests?

Thousands of anti-government protesters in Bulgaria — some chanting “Mafia out” — have hit the streets of the capital Sofia.

They allege endemic corruption and want the resignation of PM Boyko Borissov, his centre-right government and the chief prosecutor.

So, what’s the story behind the protests? And, can Borissov successfully calm the storm engulfing his administration?

What’s the background to Bulgaria’s anti-government protests?
July 7: Heavily armed security officers raided the offices of President Rumen Radev, a vocal critic of the conservative ruling party’s record on corruption. Radev accuses Borissov of having “links with the oligarchs”.

The president’s legal affairs and anti-corruption secretary and his security and defence advisor were detained for questioning and their offices searched.

Critics say the raid and arrests, organised by Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev, raise questions over whether his role has become too political.

“Corruption and the justice deficit is a terminal issue,” Dimitar Bechev, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Euronews.

“But now it resonates with a wider swathe of society as Prime Minister Borissov looks weak and dependent on vested interests and Ivanov’s actions exposed vividly how graft is victimising each and every Bulgarian,” he said.

Prosecutors said the raids were part of two separate investigations into influence-peddling and disclosure of state secrets.

Protesters, who chanted “Mafia out” and “Resign” on Saturday accuse Borissov’s government and chief prosecutor Geshev of deliberately delaying investigations into alleged links between officials and local oligarchs.

July 11: Radev called on the government and the chief prosecutor to resign.

“Turning the government into a mafia-type structure has pushed freedom-loving Bulgarians of all ages, regardless of their political affiliations, to raise demands for respect of the law,” he said in a televised address to the country.

“There is only one way out of the current situation — the resignation of the government and the prosecutor general.”

He said anger had risen after years of “corruption, incitement of fear, prosecution racketeering” and that an “anti-mafia consensus” was forming.

Civil protests begin hours later with demonstrators demanding the ruling GERB party and chief prosecutor resign.

July 12: Protests turn violent. 18 demonstrators are arrested, two protesters and four police officers injured.

July 13: Protesters now demand an end to what they say is police brutality as well as for the government’s resignation.

Hundreds of demonstrators take to a small beach on the Black Sea to protest against high-ranking officials they believe broke the law.

Access to the beach is cut as it is an estate used by the leader of a small liberal party that quietly backs Borissov, reports AFP news agency.

Protests continue the following days in the capital Sofia and in some other cities in Bulgaria. Government protesters also try to break into parliament.

Is Bulgaria corrupt?
Governance watchdog Transparency International ranks Bulgaria as the most corrupt of the 27 nations in the EU.

“The sense of a lack of justice accumulated through all those instances in the last month or so,” said Vessela Tcherneva, head of the Sofia office of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

“People got very enraged because they’re now convinced the oligarchy has much more power over the state than anyone can imagine and that the prosecutor general acts as a politician rather than a public defender,” she told Euronews.

But it is not just at a political level. Corruption affects Bulgaria’s businesses too. The economy is said to be one of the poorest in Europe, mainly due to corruption.

A 2019 report from the Centre for the Study of Democracy in Sofia on corruption in Bulgaria said that at least 35% of public procurement contracts involve corrupt practices.

How has the Borissov reacted to calls for him to resign?
Prime Minister Borissov, a former bodyguard and fireman, said when the protests started he would stay in power citing a need for stability as “the world enters into its most horrible crisis”, referring to the coronavirus pandemic.

He has repeatedly urged for calm and refused to stand down.

On July 15, Borissov’s party announced in a statement that the prime minister had asked for the resignation of the finance, economy and interior ministers after talks within the party.

The news was initially applauded by thousands of protesters but, a day later, more than 18,000 people were back on the streets calling for Borissov’s resignation.

“Judging by the level of rage you can see on the streets, a lot of young people won’t take cosmetic measures as an answer,” said Tcherneva, adding that the firing of the ministers will probably not be enough to quell the unrest.

“We may also have reached the point of no return in the sense that only holding new elections can resolve the crisis,” she said.

Who are Bulgaria’s anti-government protesters?
The demonstrators are mainly students, artists and young professionals, said Tcherneva.

She said the rallies are mainly peaceful and that the “general motive is extremely civic”.

“Even yesterday [Thursday] we saw people from the demonstrations standing between police and protesters to avoid any tension or provocation,” she said.

As the number of protesters is between 10,000-20,000 people, she said the movement is “not threatening to stability or public order”.

Euronews has interviewed Maria Mateva, a 32-year-old activist at ?????????? ?? ????? (Justice for All) who joined the protest from day one, initially in her hometown of Burgas, then in Sofia.

According to Ms Mateva – who wants a comprehensive reform of the justice system, including changes to the chief prosecutor’s role – no mainstream party is fit to drive real change in Bulgaria.

“Look, most political formations in Bulgaria descent from the Communist party structure, they are the same people coloured differently”.

She hopes that smaller parties, like Democratic Bulgaria (DB), supported by the “true democrats”, she says, will grow bigger in the future. (DB currently holds no seats in parliament).

However, she thinks it will be the young people that will have the power to turn the tide, a generation that “studied and lived abroad” and that will “hopefully get rid” of the current political class, something the previous generations failed to achieve.

“My cousin just called me on the phone from Dublin crying ‘I had to be with you, my generation is stupid and failed, but you will succeed'”.

Katrina Dimitrova, a young Bulgarian who studied in the UK and lives in London, is part of the generation Maria Mateva referred to, and agrees with her: “We need a fresh start, new faces”.

What’s the solution to Bulgaria’s protests?
The solution for rooting out corruption in Bulgaria lies in new elections, said Bechev, adding it would have to be followed by “root-and-branch judiciary reform”, which would include “curbing the prosecutor general’s power and expanding accountability”.

But that appears unlikely. Borissov’s current term in office is due to end in early 2021 and he has refused to step down before then.

He is due to face a no-confidence motion launched by the Socialist party next week, which he is expected to win.

(18. 7. 2020 via euronews.com)

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Posted in European cooperation |
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