Strasbourg emphasises subsidiarity in freedom of expression rulings

February 14 2012

Last week the European Court of Human Rights handed down two important rulings in media privacy cases, Von Hannover v Germany (No. 2) and Axel Springer AG v Germany. These cases, in both of which the Court favoured freedom of expression over privacy, would be interesting in any circumstances. What’s especially striking, though, against the background of the British government’s attempts to reform the Court, is the new stress these judgments place on the subsidiarity of Strasbourg’s role as compared with national courts.

Princess Caroline Von Hannover is better known here as Caroline of Monaco; she’s been trying to protect her privacy from paparazzi and magazines for years, and won in a famous Strasbourg ruling in 2004 in which the European Court decided that the German courts did not protect her privacy adequately. This time she was again complaining about the German courts’ refusal to grant her injunctions against the republication in German glossy magazines of photos taken of her on holiday.

But on this occasion, she lost. The Grand Chamber of the European Court held unanimously (paras. 125-6 of the judgment) that it would not displace the German courts’ refusal of injunctions:

the national courts explicitly took account of the Court’s relevant case-law … the Federal Constitutional Court, for its part, had … undertaken a detailed analysis of the Court’s case-law in response to the applicants’ complaints that the Federal Court of Justice had disregarded the Convention and the Court’s case-law.

In those circumstances, and having regard to the margin of appreciation enjoyed by the national courts when balancing competing interests, the Court concludes that the latter have not failed to comply with their positive obligations under Article 8 of the Convention. Accordingly, there has not been a violation of that provision.

What’s also striking is the relatively long discussion of the margin of appreciation at paragraphs 104-107 of the judgment, in which the Court cites a number of its previous rulings in support of the general principle that (para. 105)

In exercising its supervisory function, the Court’s task is not to take the place of the national courts, but rather to review, in the light of the case as a whole, whether the decisions they have taken pursuant to their power of appreciation are compatible with the provisions of the Convention relied on.

and (para. 107)

Where the balancing exercise has been undertaken by the national authorities in conformity with the criteria laid down in the Court’s case-law, the Court would require strong reasons to substitute its view for that of the domestic courts.

These principles, at least set out by the Court in this clear and extended form, are new: they build on one short paragraph (para. 150) in its 2010 judgment in the Naomi Campbell case, MGN v UK:

having regard to the margin of appreciation accorded to decisions of national courts in this context, the Court would require strong reasons to substitute its view for that of the final decision of the House of Lords or, indeed, to prefer the decision of the minority to that of the majority of that court, as the applicant urged the Court to do.

The contrast with the first Von Hannover case is striking: there, you’ll find little discussion of the margin of appreciation and none of the respective roles of national and international courts.

The Axel Springer case was about the German newspaper Bild, which is quite like our own Sun. It had reported the arrest of an actor, who played a famous TV detective, for cocaine possession at Munich’s Oktoberfest (it’s in September, as Clive James might have written). He had then obtained injunctions against further publication, injunctions which were upheld by the German courts.

The European Court repeated essentially what was said in Von Hannover (No. 2) about the margin of appreciation and the respective roles of national and international courts (paras. 85-88 of the Axel Springer judgment), before this time (paragraphs 110-111) finding the German courts insufficiently protected freedom of expression:

Despite the margin of appreciation enjoyed by the Contracting States, the Court considers that there is no reasonable relationship of proportionality between, on the one hand, the restrictions imposed by the national courts on the applicant company’s right to freedom of expression and, on the other hand, the legitimate aim pursued.

 Accordingly, there has been a violation of Article 10 of the Convention.

Few would disagree with this: it seems extraordinary that the German courts would essentially on grounds of privacy restrain reporting of the public fact of this actor’s arrest and I think subsequent conviction for a drug offence.

Yet five of the judges did dissent. They thought the European Court should not disturb the German courts’ conclusions even in this case. The final paragraph of the dissenting opinion is worth quoting in full. This strong emphasis on subsidiarity, though spoken by a minority in this particular case, must be music to the British government’s ears:

none of the grounds which would justify a review by this Court of the judgments of the domestic courts are present in this case. The domestic courts did not fail to balance the conflicting interests or to apply the relevant criteria in doing so. They made no manifest error of appreciation; nor did they fail to consider all the relevant factors. Nevertheless, on this occasion and instead of concentrating its assessment on whether the domestic courts applied the above-mentioned criteria effectively, the Grand Chamber has chosen to re-examine the same facts that were brought before the national courts. And this was done in spite of the national courts having extensively assessed the circumstances of the case in a way that was not manifestly unreasonable, and with the added benefit of their direct examination of the context in which the events occurred. Analysing the same facts and using the same criteria and same balancing approach as the domestic courts, the Grand Chamber came to a different conclusion, giving more weight to the protection of the right to freedom of expression than to the protection of the right to privacy. But that is precisely what the case-law of this Court has established is not our task, that is, to set ourselves up as a fourth instance to repeat anew assessments duly performed by the domestic courts.

Note the use of two key phrases: manifestly unreasonable and fourth instance, both of which are emphasised repeatedly in the British government’s recent discourse on subsidiarity.

It’s difficult to read these judgments without suspecting that the Strasbourg judges worry that they may have leaned a little too far, in the past, in the direction of protecting privacy over free expression.

Even more importantly, it’s clear that subsidiarity is not only an obsession of the British government, but has won hearts and minds on the Strasbourg bench.

2012-02-14T12:34:05+00:00Tags: , , , , |

Without Prejudice

February 10 2012

David Allen Green returns to Without Prejudice this week, I’m pleased to say, and Dr. Evan Harris is back with us too. Charon QC chairs as always, as we discuss the Leveson inquiry at the end of “Module 1” – what has it achieved and what do we want to come out of it? – and this week’s appeal in the Paul Chambers “Twitter joke” case.

It was a fun hour, as always – and there’s a nice spiky bit in the middle when David claims the liberal high ground, accusing Evan and me of being oppressive illiberals. We fight back!

Listen to the podcast here – or or subscribe through iTunes.

2012-02-10T11:02:17+00:00Tags: , , , |

Today’s “Twitter joke” appeal hearing

February 8 2012

I was live-tweeting today from the High Court hearing of Paul Chambers’s appeal in the “Twitter joke” case – an important case not just because of the way it represents the law’s arguably problematic collision with social media but because of the freedom of expression issues is raises. The hearing was interesting from a purely legal point of view, too.

Chambers was convicted by a District Judge at Doncaster Magistrates’ Court on the basis of this tweet,

Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!

of an offence under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, sending a message of a menacing character by means of a public electronic communications network.

He’d already had one unsuccessful appeal, to the Crown Court; this was an appeal from that decision, and purely on points of law – what’s know as an appeal by way of “case stated”. His solicitor is [disclosure] my friend David Allen Green of Preiskel & Co, who instructed Ben Emmerson QC and Sarah Przybylska.

Ben Emmerson began by making clear there were three limbs to his argument. First, human rights considerations – freedom of expression under the Article 10 Convention right – coloured the entire case so that either the court had to interpret section 127 in an especially heightened way, for instance applying a high standard when applying the concept of “menace”; or else the court could simply see the entire prosecution as a disproportionate interference with free speech. He also wanted to argue that a message could only be “menacing” if it was in some sense intended as a threat, either (and this was the second part of the argument) simply because nothing can ever in fact be called menacing unless so intended – this was the argument relating to the actus reus or objective, physical element of the section 127 offence; or (thirdly) because section 127 must be read as requiring some intent on the part of the defendant (this was the argument relating to the mens rea or mental element of the offence).

It soon became clear that Emmerson faced an uphill struggle trying to persuade the judges of his second and third arguments. Lord Justice Gross and Mr Justice Irwin seemed clear that the question whether a message was menacing was to be approached objectively – taking account of the context at the time the message was sent, but not dependent on an intention to threaten. So unpersuaded did the judges seem that Emmerson never really developed the mens rea aspect of his submissions – the point seemed to me lost simply on the basis of the actus reus point. To be fair to the judges it is, arguably, the same point in essence made in two slightly different ways. And throughout, Gross LJ seemed anxious to take the case reasonably shortly – he clearly thought a couple of hours was all that was needed.

Where Ben Emmerson made more ground was on his proportionality argument – that freedom of expression means that the court must consider the entire context, including the fact that those responsible for security at Robin Hood airport did not see the tweet as representing a “credible” threat, and decide whether the prosecution was a proportionate response to the tweet. The judges seemed unattracted to the argument that section 127 should be read in a special “heightened” way under section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998, but the overall argument that they needed to give effect to section 127 in a rights-compatible way by considering proportionality was one they seemed to accept – indeed it was accepted by the prosecution.

Counsel for the DPP (who I think was Robert Smith QC) argued that the prosecution was justified not only in the interests of national security but because of the rights of others – the right of users of Twitter and of Robin Hood airport not to be subjected to tweets like this. That seemed to me the weakest point in the prosecution argument: my sense is that the real background (there was no actual national security threat of course) means they felt they had to add weight to their Article 10 defence by bringing the rights of others in. But this seems an artificial argument – it’s not clear anyone was even likely to have been alarmed by the tweet. It was argued for the DPP that there was a real assessment of the tweet by the security officers responsible and that there’s a need to deter irresponsible tweets, but that, really, was the entire basis of the Crown’s proportionality “defence”.

Two technical but important points were raised in addition.

First, the judges asked counsel whether they had jurisdiction to vary Paul Chambers’s sentence (assuming they decide not to acquit him). The Crown argued strongly that they did not, since a “case stated” appeal relates only to questions of the pure law of section 127. As I understood his submissions Ben Emmerson argued that the issues of law put before the court included sentence, and that they had to consider the proportionality of the sentence as well as of the prosecution and conviction. I thought it interesting that the judges didn’t seem to pursue this point as far as they might have in the hearing.

Second, Irwin J put it to counsel that the Crown Court had found as a fact that the tweet was menacing – so that the court on appeal could not (unless it thought the lower court had misdirected itself as to the meaning of “menacing”) disturb that finding. That I don’t think was disputed by Ben Emmerson.

Gross LJ said judgment would be reserved – we can expect it to be handed down in the next couple of weeks.

What seemed clear in court today was that all Paul Chambers’s arguments except proportionality fell on pretty stony ground. Neither Gross LJ nor Irwin J seemed persuaded at all that the concept of menace in section 127 is anything more than an objective one, on which the Crown Court had made reasonable findings of fact. They seemed very resistant to the argument that section 3 of the Human Rights Act requires them to read the statute in a different way.

The proportionality argument, though – that it was disproportionate and therefore under section 6 of the Human Rights Act (which wasn’t expressly mentioned, interestingly, though it was implicit in the background throughout) unlawful for the CPS to prosecute and for the courts to convict Paul Chambers for this tweet – seemed to me to find more purchase with the court. At one point Gross LJ showed some impatience when he thought Ben Emmerson was arguing that no joke could ever be proportionately criminalised – he called that submission

a touch superficial.

But the idea that it might in this case have been disproportionate to prosecute this particular tweet was taken more seriously by the judges, and this proportionality issue is in my view the key to their ultimate ruling.

My prediction? It can only ever be an instinctive feeling but perhaps a legal pundit has to make one. Although many of the arguments deployed for Paul Chambers got nowhere today, it’s easy to overlook how clearly accepted it was on all sides that the judges must apply a proportionality test – and how relatively weak the Crown was in justifying the prosecution in those terms.

On proportionality, my sense is that it really could go either way. Paul Chambers is unlikely to win his appeal on any other point – but on that one, he just might.

2012-02-08T19:47:47+00:00Tags: , , , |

The “Twitter joke” appeal: interview with David Allen Green

February 8 2012

Shortly after today’s hearing ended in Paul Chambers’s “case stated” appeal to the High Court in the “Twitter joke” case, I spoke to his solicitor David Allen Green – and asked him how he thought the hearing had gone.

Listen to the interview here.

David Allen Green interview – Twitter joke appeal by carlgardner

2012-02-08T17:35:49+00:00Tags: , , , |

Those Eurocrime repatriators

February 6 2012

I wrote in my last post, musing on what might happen if Julian Assange were to win his Supreme Court appeal, that

many Eurosceptics would prefer us simply to pull out of the entire system of criminal cooperation in Europe, and would use the difficulty to lobby hard for this area of policy to be fully “repatriated” on the back of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Well, now helpfully these Eurosceptics, or at least the Conservatives ones in the Commons, have identified themselves by writing a letter about it to the Telegraph:

We have deep concerns about the operation of the European Arrest Warrant for our citizens. We want the UK Supreme Court to have the last word on UK crime and policing, not the European Court of Justice. The recent study by Open Europe offers a pragmatic alternative. Britain should exercise its “opt out” from 130 measures under the EU’s crime and policing plan by 2014.

It seems to me the reference to concern “for our citizens” can be read as an attempt to distance this call from the cause of Julian Assange – he’s not a British citizen of course.

Here’s the Open Europe paper – “An Unavoidable Choice” – that the MPs refer to:

2012-02-06T11:34:20+00:00Tags: , , , |

What if Julian Assange won? EU headache? Or Eurosceptic dream?

February 3 2012

I doubt very much he will: I think the Supreme Court will be driven to conclude that the phrase judicial authority in the European Arrest Warrant Framework Decision is capable of including a public prosecutor, and that UK legislation giving domestic effect to the Framework Decision must necessarily have the same meaning. If they reach any other conclusion, I’ll think they’ve gone bonkers.

But what if he did win? The question’s interesting because it shines light on an unusual, time-limited opt-out the UK has in relation to the European Arrest Warrant system – and all similar EU laws on criminal cooperation.

Something I’ve written before is that the obvious procedural solution usually available in a case where parties are bickering over the meaning of an EU legal term – a reference to the European Court of Justice – was not available in this case. Indeed, the Supreme Court would normally have had to refer the matter to the ECJ for a binding decision because under Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, where a question of interpretation

is raised in a case pending before a court or tribunal of a Member State against whose decisions there is no judicial remedy under national law, that court or tribunal shall bring the matter before the Court.

There’s no national judicial remedy against decisions of UK Supreme Court, so it would be duty bound to refer – and Julian Assange would have remained on bail however long the ECJ took to rule – and it does usually take a long time.

None of this applies because the UK has not accepted its jurisdiction in relation to criminal cooperation laws like the EAW Framework Decision. Because of Protocol 36 to the TFEU, this opt-out from ECJ jurisdiction only lasts till 2015, though: scroll all the way down to Article 10(1) and (3) to see the relevant provisions. It’s one of the compromises the UK made in the Lisbon Treaty. The only way of the UK escaping termination of the opt-out would be to pull out of the EAW system altogether under Article 10(4) of the Protocol.

If the Supreme Court justices did decide to read the Framework Decision as requiring an EAW to be issued by a court, the first obvious consequence would be to throw the European Arrest Warrant system into disarray, at least as far as it applies to suspects sought in the UK. Countries like Sweden and France whose prosecutors issue warrants would be unable to pursue suspects in Britain – those countries will no doubt see our judges as having created a “safe haven” for fugitives.

Initially this might please Eurosceptics and some civil liberties campaigners, who’d be pleased to see British judges insist on their own reading of EU law, ensuring that anyone who wanted someone extradited from Britain had to live up to British ideas of justice. This is the sort of relationship some Conservatives would like the UK to have to human rights law, and which it is possible to achieve in this corner of EU law until 2015 because of the UK’s ECJ opt-out.

I suppose the member states affected might decide to designate courts as their issuing authorities in order to satisfy the UK. But this seems unlikely given that the change would only be needed in respect of one other state. It’d make much more sense, surely, to amend the Framework Decision. The solution could be to replace the term judicial authority with something else – like simply authority – wherever necessary to remove the local British difficulty.

But wait: amending the Framework Decision could potentially have further, unwanted ramifications. Under Article 10(2) of Protocol 36, which we looked at earlier,

The amendment of an act referred to in paragraph 1 shall entail the applicability of the powers of the institutions referred to in that paragraph as set out in the Treaties with respect to the amended act for those Member States to which that amended act shall apply.

In other words, any amendment would result in the immediate termination of the UK’s opt-out from ECJ jurisdiction: it would bring about the applicability of the powers of the ECJ with respect to the amended Framework Decision.

Surely David Cameron at least would not want to bring that about three years before it’s due; although the relevant minister, Ken Clarke, and Liberal Democrat ministers, might take a different view. A Julian Assange win, in other words, would be a grenade laid next to the government’s Euro-fissure.

How could the problem be solved? One way, as I’ve said, would be for other countries to change their arrangements to suit the British and allow us to keep our opt-out for as long as it suits us. Unlikely, perhaps, given Britain’s recent unhelpfulness towards them. Another option would be for the EAW system to limp along for three years, British suspects being out of reach of some European prosecutors, until the ECJ can order British judges to fall into line. The European countries affected, like Sweden, might decide to retaliate by not extraditing suspects to Britain.

Finally, it might be possible for member states to agree to textually amend the Framework Decision – or at least the British text – but at the same time also to agree that the change does not amount to an “amendment” but was merely a “clarification” of what was always the intended meaning of the instrument. That would be sneaky, and subject to a possible legal challenge, but might work as a reasonable trade, the UK agreeing to remove the problem in return for being allowed to keep its limited opt-out.

Of course many Eurosceptics would prefer us simply to pull out of the entire system of criminal cooperation in Europe, and would use the difficulty to lobby hard for this area of policy to be fully “repatriated” on the back of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

That wouldn’t necessarily result in people like Osman Hussein evading British justice. Presumably we’d negotiate bilateral extradition treaties with our European neighbours. Whether a judge would need to issue an extradition request or whether a prosecutor could do so would then simply be a matter of agreement in those treaties. I wonder what the UK-Swedish treaty would say.

2012-02-03T17:25:44+00:00Tags: , |

Without Prejudice

February 3 2012

Without Prejudice is back in its panel format this week, as Professor Gary Slapper, Director of NYU in London, and barrister and former MP Jerry Hayes  join Charon QC and me to discuss:

  • why do we need law schools?
  • are human rights “left-wing twaddle”?
  • the power of the state – has it got too much? and
  • Julian Assange’s Supreme Court appeal,

plus, Jerry’s angry about barristers’ cash flow, and what the government’s done to make it worse.

Gary and Jerry both have plenty to say in their own inimitable styles – and I got a word in from time to time too. It was a free-wheeling, edge-of-seat type of discussion, and a lot of fun.

Listen to the podcast here or subscribe through iTunes.

2012-02-03T12:57:49+00:00Tags: |

Julian Assange in the Supreme Court

February 1 2012

Julian Assange today takes his argument against extradition to Sweden to the UK Supreme Court. The hearing is due to finish tomorrow – it’s not clear yet when the Court is likely to publish its judgment.

There’s one question only being argued before the Supreme Court: whether the Swedish prosecutor is a judicial authority for the purposes of Part 1 of the Extradition Act 2003, which gives effect to the European Arrest Warrant system. All his other legal arguments – including the argument that the European Arrest Warrant against him is invalid because he’s not been charged – have been defeated and are no longer in dispute.

Thanks to the Guardian, we can read Assange’s arguments on the judicial authority point:

The argument looks attractive superficially (as written submissions usually do when read in isolation), but in reality it’s pretty thin. Dinah Rose QC, for Assange, makes much of the fundamental principle that a prosecutor cannot be a judge in its own cause, and argues that case law under the European Convention on Human Rights strongly supports that principle. But the argument is deeply problematic: the ECHR does not and cannot lay down a general principle that prosecutors can’t count as judicial authorities for any purposes whatever throughout Europe.

The case law Dinah Rose cites in support of her client shows us a prosecutor isn’t sufficiently independent to order Assange’s detention under article 5 of the Convention. A prosecutor wouldn’t be sufficiently independent to determine civil rights or criminal charges under article 6. But the Swedish prosecutor in this case has neither ordered Assange’s detention (that has been authorised by a court in both countries) nor purported to determine any charge against him. Assange’s argument does not establish the link between the requirements of the Convention and the issuing of the European Arrest Warrant that would in my view be needed in order for the human rights principles he draws on to govern the Court’s interpretation of the concept of judicial authority. It’s this missing link that I think is the fatal flaw.

Assange’s argument is hopeless – I expect him to lose and, as I’ve been saying for the last year, I expect him eventually to face justice in Sweden.

He may apply to the European Court of Human Rights and try to obtain “interim measures” preventing his immediate surrender to Sweden – but since it’s unclear on what basis he can argue his extradition or prosecution would breach the Convention at all, and since there can be no serious suggestion that Swedish justice would amount to a flagrant denial of justice, I’ll be astonished if he achieves that.

He could be in Sweden by Easter.

2012-02-06T11:34:08+00:00Tags: , , , , |

Bratza: criticism of Strasbourg “not borne out by the facts”

January 24 2012

In today’s Independent, President of the European Court of Human Rights Sir Nicolas Bratza defends the record of his court, and effectively pleads for more understanding in Britain. The European Court, he says

has been particularly respectful of decisions emanating from courts in the UK since the coming into effect of the Human Rights Act, and this because of the very high quality of those judgments. To take 2011 as the most recent example: of the 955 applications against the UK decided, the court found a violation of the convention in just eight cases.

This is a good point to make, rightly correcting the misleading statistics that have been bandied around on this subject and that have already been taken apart by Adam Wagner at the UK Human Rights Blog.

In fact, Bratza makes a number of very good points. The Strasbourg court’s influence has been overwhelmingly positive, he says, citing issues on which its rulings have been widely accepted such as corporal punishment, homosexuality, the rights of transsexuals and the treatment of child defendants. He reminds us of the court’s role in consolidating democratic reform in central and eastern Europe, and points out that the court’s backlog is not the result of its inefficiency, but of the huge and increasing volume of applications it receives. I agree with almost everything he says.

But he goes on:

Against this background, it is disappointing to hear senior British politicians lending their voices to criticisms more frequently heard in the popular press, often based on a misunderstanding of the court’s role and history, and of the legal issues at stake. It is particularly unfortunate that a single judgment of the court on a case relating to UK prisoners’ voting rights, which was delivered in 2005 and has still not been implemented, has been used as the springboard for a sustained attack on the court and has led to repeated calls for the granting of powers of Parliament to override judgments of the court against the UK, and even for the withdrawal of the UK from the convention.

Bratza does not defend or criticise the Hirst judgment on prisoners’ votes, it’s worth noting – rightly, since it cannot be part of his role as President to debate the merits of any one of the court’s rulings. Fair enough. And I agree with him that the stand-off between British politicians and the court on prisoners’ votes is indeed unfortunate. But this case in particular undermines Sir Nicolas’s contention that

criticism relating to interference is simply not borne out by the facts.

I support the European Court of Human Rights, and am pleased to see Sir Nicolas defend its general record robustly. Most British criticism of the human rights court is wrong-headed and ill-informed. But on some specifics, I’m afraid the facts do bear out the complaint that the court has sometimes been too interventionist.

In the Hirst case and a couple of those which have followed, the court ignored one of its own key legal principles (the “margin of appreciation” it supposedly allows states), preferring to micromanage policy throughout Europe. The same sort of thing happened, I’d argue, in the DNA database case, S v Marper.

If the court can check its own occasional excessive interventionism, it will deserve our respect all the more.

2012-01-24T12:51:21+00:00Tags: |

Commission v Hungary

January 24 2012

Last week the European Commission took the first step towards European Court proceedings against Hungary, over the country’s controversial new constitution, which took effect at the start of the year.

Here’s the Commission’s press release. It summarises the legal grounds on which the Commission has issued its letter of formal notice:

Under new Hungarian legislation, also 274 judges (including judges at the Supreme Court) are being compulsorily retired in contradiction to EU rules. The government also receives powers over the data protection authority that contradict the EU Treaties, which require the independence of national data protection authorities (Articles 16 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union/TFEU, Article 8(3) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights) and the independence of the national central bank (Articles 130 and 127 TFEU, Article 14 of the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank). Hungary’s central bank is part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) and the Hungarian Central Bank Governor has a seat in the General Council of the European Central Bank, which is the ECB’s third decision-making body.

As I say, this is only the first formal step towards infraction proceedings in the European Court of Justice: litigation hasn’t actually been commenced yet. Hungary now has a month in which to respond to the Commission in private correspondence, after which the Commission, if not satisfied with Hungary’s arguments and proposals, will deliver what’s called a “reasoned opinion” under article 258 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. That’s equivalent to a letter before action, and if Hungary doesn’t then cave in to the Commission’s demands (probably within a further month), the court proceedings will actually begin.

So in reality, we’re in a period of intense negotiation. Last week the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban defended his policies in the European Parliament; today he meets Commission President Jose-Manuel Barroso to discuss the differences between them.

Some might criticise the response of the EU and its leaders as being too soft, as compared with its policy of swift sanctions against Austria when the controversial right-wing Freedom Party entered its government in 2000. That though, was an unsuccessful and counter-productive policy, which many even left-wing Austrians thought was over the top (I visited Austria twice that year as I recall), and from which the EU backed down fairly quickly.

This more targeted approach of challenging concrete and specific breaches of EU law as they arise seems to me to have much greater potential to produce results, and to appear legitimate to Hungarians.

2012-01-24T11:22:31+00:00Tags: , |
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