On Monday in Warsaw, Justice Minister Judit Varga had talks about the promotion of the wider European presentation of Central Europe’s specific law and state development process.

Both Poland and Hungary believe it is necessary to create a professional community and knowledge base in Central Europe which is capable of presenting the region’s “specific view” on the issues of European law and state development and the most important questions of European integration, the Minister told the Hungarian news agency MTI in a telephone interview.

Therefore, in response to an earlier Czech initiative and a most recent Polish initiative taken under the present Polish presidency of the Visegrád Four, the plan for the establishment of a V4 comparative law institute has emerged which Hungary supports unconditionally. Justice cooperation is traditionally excellent between the two countries, similar to cooperation in other areas, the Minister added.

As a first step, Ms. Varga signed a cooperation agreement with her Polish counterpart Zbigniew Zibro between the Mádl Ferenc Institute of Comparative Law and the Polish Law Institute.

The Minister said she believes it is also important to establish a network of professors which would be able to offer an alternative in the areas of jurisprudence and theory of the state by presenting the Central European legal profession’s viewpoint. “We can clearly see that in European professional circles as well as in writings that tend to influence public opinion, the European federalist view has a very strong presence. It is important to offer a conservative alternative to this that relies on strong nation states,” she argued.

She said the European Union’s summit currently under way about the financial framework for the period between 2021-2027 and the attached economic rescue package had also added to the topicality of bilateral justice talks. One of the cardinal points of the negotiations is about whether or not the distribution of the rescue package will be tied to conditions relating to the rule of law, she said. Hungary repeatedly declared as a basic principle that any political or ideological pressure exerted in connection with budgetary issues was unacceptable, she added.

As Prime Minister Viktor Orbán himself pointed out, financial and economic issues cannot be mixed with political and ideological issues, and they must not be used to exert pressure, Ms. Varga underlined. In this regard, Parliament gave the prime minister a clear mandate for the EU summit, she recalled.

It is important to stress that the rule of law has no generally accepted definition; in the treaties of the European Union there is no adequate legal basis for taking Member States to task over its concept. Additionally, if the European Commission were given an instrument which enables it to take Member States to task, that could set a precedent for subjective evaluation and arbitrary law application,” she stated.

Hungary believes that only countries which respect one another can conduct a dialogue about the rule of law on an intergovernmental basis, and it cannot under any circumstances be mixed with the EU’s budgetary logic or any set of sanctions, the Minister said, adding that already at present there are a number of instruments and mechanisms which protect the EU’s financial interests, and these are employed regularly, she pointed out.