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Comment by loriverkutya | Hacker News Reader

The EU is pretty much opposing this already: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20200324IP...

EU can't do anything meaningful under the current rules because far-right populist parties in Poland and Hungary veto everything EU could to against one of them.

I think things are allowed to get worse until main EU members decide that it's worth risking breaking the EU to get all countries to play with normal rules again or get them thrown out.

Fidesz–KDNP has been eroding the laws and norms more than a decade and they have put their people into universities, media and courts. I don't see easy way back to normal any time soon.

Far right? If you think the ruling party in Poland is far right, then I'm sorry, but your scale is off. People throw that term around very loosely. There is much to disagree with (for instance, they're too etatist for my taste, but then, Europe is generally too etatist), but far right is just a slur used against those that oppose the (Franco-)German imperialist status quo. Mind you, the ruling party of Poland is pro-EU in general.

I accept the criticism.

The leading party in Poland, Law and Justice party, is right-wing populist, not far-right populist. They formed a coalition with far-right party that has moved little bit away from the far-right.

Right-wing populist parties also erode the laws and norms just as far-right. The willingness of Law and Justice party to move together with far-right for support when they need it is problematic.

The main difference in their foreign politics is Russia. Poland was so heavily inoculated against Russia during the WWII that you get nowhere if you go with Russia.

Both are eroding the rules and norms of their countries.

All parties erode laws, thats their raison d'être. Its just when the party you support does it you call it progress.

The previous center coalition that had ruled Poland for 8 years was pretty bad, but they did nowhere near the damage to rule of law as is being done now by right-wing populists (crippling the judiciary, outright propaganda in state TV, open oppression of minorities such as LGBT people).

The current ruling coalition of Poland is pro-EU funds only, these notwithstanding they are always sure to blame Brussels for every woe and go out of their way to please Washington instead of integrating with Europe. They're also hard at work trying to make Poland the European outlier ,often even more so than Hungary –the infamous 27:1 European Council president vote comes to mind, more recently the 2050 climate target agreement.

The time to oppose Orban would have been a few years ago. I'd like to think the EU would take strong action over this, but the unanimity requirements for situations like this make it a total non-starter.

The EU structure greatly reminds me of the weak Articles of Confederation adopted after the American Revolution (to be abandoned after a few years for a stronger federal government with the Constitution). It just doesn't work to have all sovereignty vested in constituent members of a government.

On the other hand, that level of centralisation of soverignty isn't popular.

In the eastern part of EU, there are plenty of states including my own which were centrally planned during communism, and people have strong negative emotions towards that, for some good reasons. It just didn't work very well, and once performant economies were brought on the level of 3rd world counterparts simply by bad long term management over 40 years.

One example - Czechoslovakia had at the end of the WWII more performant economy overall than Austria. After 40 years, I recall first trip there - it felt so surreal. The country was spot clean, maintained, highly developed, shops were full of quality wares we couldn't dream of (say bananas and oranges, meat looked so much more tasty and so on). We could barely afford going to the public toilet in the center.

I am sure it could be theoretically done better, but I can't imagine it done well back home.

See, that's the issue. The federalist project is not only doomed, but foolish. It never had a chance. You cannot compare the US, a country that grew out of a founding nucleus and produced the states that compose it as it expanded with an attempt to fuse together almost 30 nation states speaking a number of different languages, affected by different geopolitical pressures and concerns, with their own histories, etc, etc, into some federal entity where magically a Frenchman will view the good of a Croatian with equal priority. It won't happen and it's unnatural. You can't strap reality into some preconceived Procrustean bed and torture it into assuming the shape you want it to assume (the new Soviet man anyone?). Not only is it psychopathic in intent, but it won't work. When the seas are calm, we might be able to blandly pretend that we're a happy family, but every crisis in the EU merely shatters those pretensions of the true believers. The 2008 financial crisis, the migrant crisis, the Greek debt crisis, the energy solidarity debacles, etc, etc, etc, and now the coronavirus and soon the resulting economic recession. Each blow will demonstrate the farce that the federal project is.

It is much more sane to begin with the truth and to respect it. Only then, in light of the facts, can we begin to speak of the possibility of a workable cooperation between nations instead of trying to will arbitrary things into existence in some quixotic and destructive endeavor. All it does is conceal the injustices that occur under the veneer of "unity".

The EU has pretty much watched all along while Orban was building up his unconstitutional power machine.

By "opposing this" you mean some committee has blogged about it?

If you register a protest but continue to send money and enforce their European Arrest Warrants, your protestations are truly meaningless.

A little too late now isn't it? Even if they were going to kick Hungary out of the EU, Orban would be an idiot to give up that power.

As a Hungarian, it would be devastating for our country if EU kicked Hungary out. Also EU understands it that the government doesn't represent the will people, as there was a huge amount of vote manipulation.

The better solution is to just stop sending EU money to Orban (which he used to buy up all the media and gain this power) and send money to the cities and projects directly.

From the outside it really seems like Orban is doing a good job defending his people from all sorts of onslaughts. Is that not the case? Would you have preferred to have a weaker leader, and open borders all this time?

I'm not Hungarian (but I live with one ;)). It seems that (much like in the west) the issue of "onslaughts" prevented by heavy restrictions on migration is one perspective.

Another might see it as using the threat of outsiders/foreigners to consolidate power by the administration. Certainly controversial issues, but hardly ones that are obvious or settled.

there isn't, and never was, any sort of onslaught.

There are manufactured fears that "millions of people will come to hungary from africa", that rich jews will set up a dictatorship in hungary, and that the EU will somehow impose itself over the parliament.

None of this has any foundation in reality.

Most of the migrants who came to Hungary preferred to go to Germany, as the income taxes in Hungary are the highest inside the EU.

Budapest is an amazing city to live in as long as you don't earn your money there.

The biggest problem for me though weren't his leadership decinsions, but the amount of corruption happening. Hungary lost many places in the Corruption Perceptions Index in the last 10 years, while its surrounding countries got much better.

Here's the fun part: they can't kick anyone out. It's not built into the Lisbon Treaty. There's no provision for that. You can withdraw as the UK did but that's all. The remaining countries would need to draw up a new treaty without the country to be kicked out and face probably an endless torrent of lawsuits if they terminate the Lisbon Treaty.

>and face probably an endless torrent of lawsuits if they terminate the Lisbon Treaty.

On what grounds?

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