Denmark: Siltanews – News Desk
As it takes up the EU’s rolling presidency from July, Denmark is determined to ramp up the draconian Article 7 sanctioning procedure against Hungary. Yet, with a crucial general election set for April 2026, such a move could do more harm than good.
Since I graduated as a lawyer in Hungary exactly ten years ago, the rule of law in the EU and the EU’s draconian Article 7 procedure have been at the core of my professional interest. I wrote my PhD and published my first book on the matter, and the topic of enforcement, restoration and maintenance of the rule of law has been central to all of my research projects.
Article 7 is the provision of the EU Treaty that enables the suspension of a member state’s voting rights in certain EU institutions if the country seriously and persistently breaches the EU’s founding values, namely, the rule of law, democracy and protection of fundamental rights. The provision foresees a complicated three-stage procedure; it was initially considered as the ‘nuclear option’, meant not to be used at all.
It was already clear in my undergraduate years that undermining the rule of law and eliminating checks and balances by Viktor Orban’s nationalist-conservative government would sooner or later trigger some kind of action from the EU. However, for several years this was mostly confined to infringement procedures before the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) in specific matters, The Article 7 procedure wasn’t launched until 2018.
Since then, after almost seven years, nothing much has happened, apart from some hearings with Hungarian ministers in the Council of the EU (the co-legislative body comprising the competent ministers of each member state, depending on the given subject, most often referred to simply as the Council).
A vote has never been put on the agenda of the Council, not even about determining whether a “clear risk of a serious breach” of EU values has taken place, which would be the first step before finding the “existence of a serious and persistent breach” by heads of states and governments in the European Council (a different council from that of member state ministers, an entirely political body made up of heads of government/state which decides by unanimity).
With Article 7 officially in progress since 2018, we are still a million miles away from deciding on actual sanctions in the third phase of the procedure. Instead, billions worth of EU funds destined for Hungary have been frozen over rule-of-law concerns under completely different legal regimes.
Now, there is the stated intention to accelerate the Article 7 procedure, as announced by Denmark, which took over the rotating presidency of the Council for six months on July 1. As a Hungarian lawyer who has been studying the issue for a decade, I should be delighted that, finally, something is happening, and a crucial provision of EU constitutional law is to be applied. Actually, though, I am deeply unhappy with the situation.
The starting of the Article 7 procedure in 2018 was already pretty much delayed, but even since then, there would have been several reasons to proceed with the mechanism, at least to complete the first forewarning stage by determining that a “clear risk of a serious breach” of EU values had occurred in Hungary. For instance, the further weakening of local government and narrowing of media pluralism, especially at the local level; intervening in academic freedom by placing most public universities in asset management foundations led by people close to the government; increasing the power of apex courts over ordinary courts to enable political influence; and the large-scale corruption. Still, these were not enough to put it on the agenda for a vote on the Council.
More recently, seeing the strengthening of the new opposition Tisza party, the Fidesz-led government has raised the stakes by coming up with legislative ideas that are more typical of authoritarian systems, not democracies. Until now, the government has always stepped back at the last minute, leaving the new extreme laws unapplied. For instance, June 28’s Pride march in Budapest was officially banned, though a record number of participants, nearly 200,000, attended the event. After recording the march with cameras equipped with facial recognition software, the police announced on July 7 it would not, after all, fine those who turned out for it. The even more controversial “Transparency of Public Life” bill, which would have introduced open censorship in the name of sovereignty, has been provisionally withdrawn from parliament, though it is likely to be smuggled back in later on during the election campaign.
And here, timing gains a special relevance. Namely, if proceeding with the Article 7 procedure was not urgent in the past seven years, despite all the government’s continuous efforts to further undermine the rule of law and cement its power, why would it be urgent now, nine months ahead of a crucial general election due in April 2026?
Over the past 15 years, Hungarians have gotten used to elections not really mattering: since Fidesz’s landslide win in 2010, the only question at each election was whether Orban’s party would achieve its two-thirds majority or just a simple majority. Unlike previous years, though, in 2026 there is the real possibility of an opposition win.
Former Fidesz-apparatchik Peter Magyar’s Tisza party has enjoyed a double-digit lead in the polls for more than half a year now, while support for Fidesz is slowly melting and that for the traditional opposition parties has all but evaporated. One of the main reasons for Magyar’s success is that, unlike the old opposition, he consistently avoids taking sides in ideologically divisive issues so he can garner support from both liberal and conservative voters. Instead, he talks about the disastrous state of public health care, the entrenched corruption and high inflation. Even so, the government tries to depict him as a creature of “Brussels” and servant of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
No matter that there is absolutely no truth to such propaganda, as Magyar himself is very critical about the accelerated EU accession of Ukraine and insists on holding a binding referendum on the matter at a later stage of the accession process (such popular votes are legally possible and not unprecedented). Fidesz is simply using the same recipe that has always worked over the last 15 years: first, find an enemy; second, depict the opposition as the servant of that enemy; and third, proclaim yourself as the only defender of Hungarian sovereignty.
Earlier, those ‘freedom fighter’ campaigns by the government were only directed at the EU (“Brussels”), but now that Ukraine is aspiring to EU membership, it has become a target as well: the government’s main promise is that by using his veto in the European Council, only Orban can prevent Ukraine from joining the EU.