Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Confronting Europe’s Illiberals

Guy Verhofstadt 31st May 2017

Guy Verhofstadt (CC ALDE Communication)

Guy Verhofstadt

European politicians have mastered the art of wagging their finger, most recently at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and US President Donald Trump. Sadly, the same cannot be said for our ability to formulate political solutions and implement common policies.

The refugee crisis has shaken Europe to its core, because, rather than taking collective responsibility for managing the flood of migrants and refugees into Europe, we have mostly shifted the burden to frontline countries. This has eroded European solidarity. Likewise, our inability to come together to stop Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s war crimes against his own people has left a void that Putin and Iran have filled.

European leaders too often shout from the sidelines when they should be on the field, acting to defend common European interests. And as if our failure to ensure stability in our own neighborhood was not enough, we have also allowed right-wing populist and nationalist movements to take off within the European Union itself. These movements, actively fomented by Russia, have produced homegrown political leaders who frighteningly – but not surprisingly – resemble Putin and Erdoğan.

Poland’s de facto leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in particular, have been busily constructing illiberal states within the EU. Since coming to power in 2010, Orbán has been using his large parliamentary majority to rewrite Hungary’s constitution for his own ends. Apparently, winning elections is not enough. He now wants to shred the liberal values that he once championed as a young centrist politician, and cement his control over Hungary’s political process.

In recent years, he has pursued this project through varied and ruthless means. The government regularly harasses or raids civil-society and nongovernmental organizations. Media outlets that disseminate Orbán’s propaganda receive tax breaks, while those that criticize him are taxed so heavily that they eventually have to give up. This means that EU money is effectively being used to stoke Euroskepticism.

In what is only the latest outrage, Orbán’s government is attempting to shut down Central European University in Budapest. Although CEU, founded by the Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist George Soros and led by the human-rights scholar and former Canadian opposition leader Michael Ignatieff, is just 26 years old, many of its departments already rank among the top 50 in the world. Nonetheless, Orbán has refused to talk with Ignatieff; consequently, the university could be forced to close by the end of the year.

In fine autocratic fashion, Orbán has tried to smear CEU with hysterical reporting about the university’s foreign financing. And, because he wants to portray CEU as “un-Hungarian,” he usually neglects to mention that he himself received a Soros-funded scholarship to study at Oxford soon after the collapse of Hungary’s communist regime.

Orbán’s attack on CEU amounts to more than a violation of academic freedom. Now that he has weakened Hungary’s constitutional court and free press, he wants to undermine critical thinking itself. If he succeeds, he will have removed yet another check on his power. And, by shutting down such a prominent US-supported institution, he can send a message that no one who has stood up to him has won.

Despots throughout history have used the same tactics. But Orbán is doing so in the EU of 2017. It is worth remembering that, in order to join the EU, Hungary had to meet stringent accession criteria, including credible democratic institutions and adherence to the rule of law. The fact that those high standards are now being systematically eroded has introduced a paradox for the EU. Once a country has gained entry into the bloc, there is little that can be done to ensure that it maintains democratic standards and upholds European values.

The European Commission can launch as many “infringement procedures” against Hungary as it wishes; Orbán will simply ignore them with smirking pleasure. After months of discourse with Hungarian government officials, the EU’s only option now is to invoke Article 7 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which could ultimately remove Hungary’s voting rights within the EU.

Invoking Article 7 is not a “nuclear option,” as some have claimed. Rather, it is the logical response to a member-state government that has routinely violated citizens’ fundamental rights and EU values. Earlier this month, deeply concerned members of the European Parliament, after two previous attempts, finally approved a resolution that will pave the way for EU sanctions against Hungary.

From the standpoint of European parliamentarians, there is no reason why sanctions cannot be quickly implemented. The European Commission has already documented the facts of the case against Hungary, complete with arguments and counter-arguments. If two-thirds of MEPs now approve sanctions, the file will be forwarded to the European Council – at which point European heads of state will have no choice but to address the matter.

Europe’s credibility already suffers because some of its leaders hold ambiguous attitudes toward Erdoğan, Trump, and Putin. But continuing to waver over Orbán’s transgressions will have even more serious long-term costs. We Europeans must aspire to be more than just participants in an internal market. We need to restore the values-based community that once helped us face down dictators like Francisco Franco, António de Olivier Salazar, and the Greek colonels, and that united Europe after the collapse of communism.

A values-based community has no place for governments such as those that now rule Hungary and Poland. The EU should invoke Article 7 as soon as possible, and with the broadest possible majority among member states. And, after Orbán, we must turn our attention to Kaczyński.

Copyright: Project Syndicate 2017 Confronting Europe’s Illiberals

Guy Verhofstadt

Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, is President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE) in the European Parliament.

You are here: Home / Politics / Confronting Europe’s Illiberals

Most Popular Posts

European civil war,iron curtain,NATO,Ukraine,Gorbachev The new European civil warGuido Montani
Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse

Most Recent Posts

EU social agenda,social investment,social protection EU social agenda beyond 2024—no time to wasteFrank Vandenbroucke
pension reform,Germany,Lindner Pension reform in Germany—a market solution?Fabian Mushövel and Nicholas Barr
European civil war,iron curtain,NATO,Ukraine,Gorbachev The new European civil warGuido Montani
artists,cultural workers Europe’s stars must shine for artists and creativesIsabelle Van de Gejuchte
transition,deindustrialisation,degradation,environment Europe’s industry and the ecological transitionCharlotte Bez and Lorenzo Feltrin

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube