THE EUROPEAN Union has welcomed Hungary’s offer to amend its media law if necessary, as it sought to bring a positive end to the troubled first week of Budapest’s EU presidency.
Germany, France, Britain and leading press watchdogs have sharply criticised new Hungarian legislation that would allow a council of government loyalists to levy large fines on media outlets that fail to uphold vaguely defined standards of fairness, taste and decency.
The council could also force journalists to reveal their sources in certain cases.
“We want to diminish the political weight of this conflict. We don’t want it to hold back the success of . . . Hungary’s EU presidency,” said Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban during a meeting with European Commission president José Manuel Barroso.
“As with all other legislation, in the case of the media law we will monitor its application in practice, and if we see that some kind of political concerns seem justified during the application of the law, then we will be ready . . . to remedy those,” Mr Orban added.
He went on to stress, however, that Hungary would not yield on the media law purely as a result of political pressure.
“But if there is no common sense and reasonable argument, we will not make any changes whatsoever as a result of any campaign or pressure, however broad the campaign or strong the pressure may be.”
Mr Orban, whom critics accuse of using a two-thirds majority in parliament to concentrate a dangerous amount of power in his own hands, said this week that Hungary would only change the media law if EU states with legislation he insisted was similar also changed theirs.
Mr Barroso said he had received assurances from Mr Orban that the law would meet EU norms and values.
“The prime minister made it clear that adjustments will be made should the commission, after a legal assessment, find that this is not the case for all aspects of the law,” he said.
“I really welcome the fact that the prime minister is willing to change the law in case implementation shows that some problems are there and that some concerns could be justified.”
Mr Barroso said he was “fully confident in Hungary’s democracy and rule of law” amid complaints about government moves to strip powers from the constitutional court, abolish an independent budgetary watchdog, put allies in charge of many major institutions and slap “crisis taxes” on big business, levies that have prompted a group of large foreign firms to complain to the EU.
Mr Orban’s alleged power grab has prompted comparisons with Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, and several prominent former anti-communist dissidents assailed him yesterday.
“What the European Union meant to prevent, and what many thought to be impossible, has now materialised: a full-fledged illiberal democracy inside its own borders,” former Czech president Vaclav Havel and others wrote in a joint letter.
“Just 20 years after communism collapsed, Hungary’s government . . . is misusing its legislative majority to methodically dismantle democracy’s checks and balances, to remove constitutional constraints, and to subordinate to the will of the ruling party all branches of power, independent institutions and the media.”