The conservatives of incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz and their likely center-left coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), have agreed to demand the bloc withhold funds and suspend voting rights from countries that violate key principles such as the rule of law, according to a draft coalition agreement seen by POLITICO.
While Hungary wasn’t mentioned by name, the draft agreement is clearly referring to the EU’s worst offender, which for years has been accused of taking a wrecking ball to democratic norms, curtailing the freedom of the press and restricting the independence of judges.
They care about the EU money quite a lot, not so much the ideology.
I stand by the training that if a county would fall below the standards that are required to enter the EU, procedures should start to expell them.
That’s all well and good, but the Geman car manufacturing industry liked the whole setup before Orbán became a problem. You are not fighting against Hungarians here, you are fighting European big business, especially German big business.
If you are looking for the receipts for how this went so wrong, look no further than Angela Merkel.
Volkswagen would have to get all their engines through customs if Hungary got kicked out, and they have a bigger say in EU policy than you, or the whole of the NL for that matter. It’s not good that this is like this, but we are all victims here.
Except at least Budapest has been protesting this for 15 years, while the wider EU populace has been content for their money to get stolen to oppress Hungary. Most of Hungary is more on board with European values than the Netherlands by the way.