EU Member States cannot be forced to adopt the budget and the recovery package on a political or ideological basis, the Justice Minister said on Kossuth Radio’s programme ‘Good morning, Hungary’ on Wednesday.
Judit Varga recalled that in the coming days a decision could be adopted regarding the principles that will govern the distribution of the EU’s multiannual financial framework and the recovery package. In this regard, the Hungarian Parliament has given the government a robust mandate, and identified two principles. On the one hand, richer Member States should not be given more funds; the distribution of funds will have to be fair and balanced. On the other hand, there can be no political or ideological conditions attached; these cannot be mixed with serious economic decisions.
No one should try to coerce Member States, no one should try to put political pressure on them in the guise of rule of law procedures, the Minister stressed. In these procedures, we cannot expect European institutions to form an objective and balanced opinion; in many instances, concerns are voiced only in relation to Hungary and Poland, despite the fact that Hungary is ranked higher than several Member States on the EU Justice Scoreboard, she stated.
The Minister also mentioned that a legislative amendment is being prepared, the purpose of which is to focus on victims. In the interest of putting an end to the ‘prison business’ which violates society’s sense of justice, on the one hand, they are creating legal rules about the suspension of the payment of prison damages, shifting the focus onto the compensation of victims, and on the other hand, they are eliminating overcrowding in prisons. They have recently inaugurated new annexes in several prisons around the country with 2,750 new places, and as a result – based on the approximately 16,800 convicts currently serving their sentences – the occupancy rate of prisons could fall to below 100 per cent, Ms. Varga underlined.
The Minister said at the Ministry of Justice a team of experts is scrutinising the rules relating to child protection; the goal is to tighten the legislation. The Kaleta case is unacceptable; paedophiles should be given the harshest possible punishment so that they could not even hope for lenient court sentences, Ms. Varga pointed out. A few weeks ago, former Hungarian ambassador to Peru Gábor Kaleta was given a suspended prison sentence at first instance due to the possession of pornographic images involving children; the sentence is not yet final and absolute.