{"id":72862,"date":"2022-04-07T05:00:36","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T09:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=72862"},"modified":"2022-04-06T18:12:58","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T22:12:58","slug":"the-eu-only-cares-about-democracy-as-long-as-the-voters-make-the-correct-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/04\/07\/the-eu-only-cares-about-democracy-as-long-as-the-voters-make-the-correct-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU only cares about democracy as long as the voters make the “correct” choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Spiked<\/em>, Tom Slater<\/a> points out the most recent proof that the EU’s principled defence of democracy fades out quickly when the voters don’t vote the way they’re “supposed to”:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Remember the other day when the European Union was pretending to care about sovereignty and democracy? When Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine had supposedly united European elites in their staunch, unflinching belief in a people’s right to determine their own destiny and shape their nation? You’ll be shocked to learn that they didn’t really mean it, at least if their reaction to the Hungarian election is anything to go by.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Viktor Orb\u00e1n and his ruling Fidesz party won a landslide victory. Already the longest-serving EU leader, Orb\u00e1n is now heading into a fourth consecutive term, with a two-thirds majority in parliament and an increased mandate. United for Hungary \u2013 an opposition coalition stretching from ex-communists to ex-fascists \u2013 defied the raised expectations of Euro elites and put in a dreadful showing, capped by gaffe-prone leader P\u00e9ter M\u00e1rki-Zay failing to win his own constituency race.<\/p>\n

In the election, Orb\u00e1n presented himself as a doughty defender of Hungarian national identity and interests against a meddlesome European Union and international set. Budapest and Brussels have been locked in a years-long battle over alleged “rule of law” breaches and LGBT rights. The EU is currently withholding \u20ac7 billion of coronavirus recovery funds from Hungary as part of a bitter legal standoff. In this, M\u00e1rki-Zay was an all-too-willing foil, arguing that his government would be a “grand prize” for the EU.<\/p>\n

In February, the European Court of Justice rejected a challenge by Hungary and Poland, upholding the legality of withholding funds from member states if they fail to adhere to “core values”. It sent a clear message to the Hungarian electorate in the run-up to the election: reject \u2013 or at least humble \u2013 this troublesome government or else. Now that Hungarians have politely refused to be pushed around, the European Commission has said it will press ahead with the formal mechanism that will deprive Hungary of the funds indefinitely.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the European liberal media took a break from piously intoning about the defence of democracy in Ukraine to decry the election result in Hungary. Timothy Garton Ash even linked the ballot-box revolt to the barbarism in Bucha. “The Ukrainian horrors are clearly far worse than the Hungarian miseries, but the two are fatefully connected”, he wrote in the Guardian<\/em>, accusing Orb\u00e1n of being a Putin stooge. “Europe should now get tough on both the Russian enemy without and the Hungarian enemy within.” A Guardian<\/em> editorial similarly called for swift EU action against this pesky central European state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Spiked, Tom Slater points out the most recent proof that the EU’s principled defence of democracy fades out quickly when the voters don’t vote the way they’re “supposed to”: Remember the other day when the European Union was pretending to care about sovereignty and democracy? When Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine had supposedly united […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,84,53],"tags":[766,337,723,480,1171],"class_list":["post-72862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-government","category-politics","tag-democracy","tag-eu","tag-hungary","tag-hypocrisy","tag-populism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-iXc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72863,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72862\/revisions\/72863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}