The European Parliament voted to initiate an Article 7 procedure against Hungary

HUNGARY - In Brief 12 Sep 2018 by Istvan Racz

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For the first time in its history, the European Parliament today voted to call the European Council to start an Article 7 procedure against a member country, and this member happens to be Hungary. As well-known to most readers, the Article 7 procedure is a reconciliation and sanctioning mechanism, started against member states, which are thought to be breaching the basic values of the EU, as laid down in Article 2 of the Lisbon Treaty. In Hungary's case, the condemning vote was based on the government's alleged breaching of the basic European values on democracy, civil rights and the rule of law, as claimed by the so-called Sargentini Report, prepared for the EP's legal and civil rights committee.The Hungarian government is questioning the validity of the voting result and is mentioning a voting fraud. Approval of the motion required a two-thirds majority, and that was narrowly exceeded by a 69.4% approval, in a way that abstention were not counted. This corresponded to EP rules, a preliminary legal opinion stated, but Fidesz is preparing to turn to the court, as the approval rate would have fallen to 64.6%, falling short of the required two-thirds majority, if abstentions had been taken into account. Hungary is very unlikely to achieve a reversal of the vote on this basis, but the issue allows the government to maintain, mainly domestically, that it was stabbed in the back at the EP vote.As also well-known to most of our readers, Article 7, after a long reconciliation procedure, may lead to the suspension of Hungary's voting rights in the European Council or the suspension of unspecified other rights within the EU. But this is only a theoretical possibility, as for an...