The Dutch daily business newspaper, Het Financieele Dagblad, published an opinion piece on Monday on the EU’s financial package which was passed this summer, but has not been implemented yet. According to the Dutch author of the piece, Hungary and Poland are threatening to veto the nearly two thousand-billion-euro package because they object to the rule of law criteria, due to the fact that “they have been violating the principles of rule of law for years”.
The depressing tone of the Dutch media’s opinion of our nation is nothing new—but this time Het Financieele Dagblad went a step further: in a caricature accompanying the article, they portrayed the Hungarian and Polish flags adorned with a middle finger.
In response to the article, Hungary’s ambassador at the Hague, András Kocsis, turned to the editors in an attempt to offer some sort of response to the allegations—but of course, the paper refused this.
Therefore, the embassy in the Hague published the repressed opinion on its own website. Here, the ambassador wrote: “The simplification of European debates is embodied by the middle finger portrayed on national flags, as in Ms De Vries’ October 19 opinion piece’s illustration; it’s not just a source of embarrassment, but reveals a complete misunderstanding of the argument.” He added: “We aren’t extorting anyone in the negotiations regarding the EU’s years-long budget and recovery fund. Quite the opposite in fact. In July 2020, the European Council made a decision on the mechanism to protect the budget and thereby strengthen rule of law. Unfortunately, however, certain Member States and the European Parliament are trying to reopen the European Council’s July agreement, thus jeopardizing the approval of the package.”
“Those who never actually supported the recovery of Europe’s economy now demand a rule of law criteria that does not even exist in the European Council’s set of consequences. It’s merely an excuse to tear apart the agreement.”
In his article, Ambassador András Kocsis also points out that the conflict between Hungary and our European partners is not actually about rule of law, but rather the ideological conflict between liberalism and Christian democracy. As he notes, the Hungarian government is firmly in favor of national sovereignty; its guiding principle is Christianity rather than migration, and its focus is on family.
The diplomat also put out his response to the outrageous affair on Twitter.
