The European Commission’s rule of law report does not provide a fair and reliable account of the state of the rule of law in the Member States, Justice Minister Judit Varga wrote on her Facebook account.
Ms. Varga said the Hungarian chapter of the European Commission’s rule of law report is a nineteen-page-long “low-quality” document.
If the European Commission investigated the same criteria to the same depth, the chapters relating to the “friends of rule of law” would be similar in length, she pointed out.
However, in relation to the Netherlands the European Commission could only “scrape together” 15 pages, while Belgium and the Northern Member States were discussed to the tune of 12 pages each. At the same time, Luxembourg had to be content with a mere 10 pages. Quite evidently, the European Commission could have done with some help in order to find further topics for these country reports, she added.
“It is a shame that they didn’t contact me before because I would have had quite a few suggestions. Here are some examples of what has been “left out of the country reports of the +friends of rule of law,” Ms. Varga said.
She mentioned as an example that the Belgian country report makes mention of “Committee P”, the external oversight agency of the police. It fails to make mention, however, of the Chovanec case in which, in consequence of brutal police action, a Slovak national died; this incident is also being investigated by that committee – the investigation has been ongoing for two years, without meaningful results.
The then head of the Belgian federal police is Europol’s Executive Director today, the Hungarian Minister wrote.
She said in the Netherlands the institution of the advisory referendum was introduced in 2015; however, these have mostly resulted in outcomes not favoured by the government.
Therefore, the legislature decided to scrap it. At the same time, the repeal legislation provided that on this no referendum can be held. “A genuine rule of law solution,” Ms. Varga wrote, observing that in the Netherlands there is no legislation to stop a practising judge from simultaneously acting as a member of one of the legislative chambers.
GRECO made a recommendation to remedy this situation; however, the Netherlands has not acted upon this recommendation to this day. The country report does not mention that either, she wrote.
She further mentioned that the UN expressed concern several times due to the fact that Finland does not sufficiently involve the Sami minority in decisions concerning their way of life and native land.
The parts of the country report related to social participation make no mention of that, she said.
An assessment of the Danish audit agency released in January 2020 identified serious shortcomings in connection with the framework available for the prevention of money laundering. The European Semester, too, drew attention to this, but it does not feature in the rule of law report, the Justice Minister listed.
“The list is far from complete. However, it amply demonstrates that anyone who would like to have a reliable and fair account of the state of the rule of law in the Member States can hardly rely on the Commission’s rule of law report,” Ms. Varga’s Facebook post reads.