The committee’s proposal was an extraordinary move, given that monitoring procedures are nearly always reserved for countries applying to become members of the Council of Europe, not countries that are already members and certainly not countries that are also EU members, like Hungary. Nevertheless, at the end of April, the Council’s Monitoring Committee approved the proposal by one vote, 21 in favor and 20 against.

At the time, I wrote a Q&A post on the issue, which is available here. For those unfamiliar with the issue, it’s useful background reading.

A few details about the Committee’s proposal were largely ignored in the press coverage. One of the two rapporteurs on the document, Ms. Jana Fischerová, resigned, saying the report supporting the Committee’s statement was seriously politically biased. Later, a German CDU representative to the Council of Europe, Axel Fischer, backed her statement, saying that the report was ‘politically motivated’. It’s quite uncommon that a co-rapporteur resigns from such position, and it is even less common that one of the members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE, criticizes a committee’s work as bluntly as Mr. Fischer did.

That reinforced the sense that the monitoring procedure proposal was yet another attempt to exploit a respected international forum, in this case the Council of Europe, for short-term political gain. Later, as I mentioned in an aside a couple of weeks ago, the motion failed before the Bureau of PACE, the body responsible for drafting the Parliamentary Assembly’s agenda. When that happens, when one committee votes for and another against, Council of Europe rules say that the Parliamentary Assembly must then make the final call. That brings us to the vote this week.

The Parliamentary Assembly’s decision could not have been clearer. PACE, according to Gergely Gulyás, deputy chair of the Fidesz parliamentary group, “voted down the monitoring initiative with an almost two-thirds majority.” But it was more than that. Instead of voting on the original initiative – which, again, was tarnished as politically biased – the Assembly voted on a modified resolution that does not even raise the monitoring idea at all, but says that the Council of Europe would follow Hungarian legislation closely.

Essentially, PACE voted to reinforce the cooperation that is already taking place between the government of Hungary and the Council of Europe rather fruitfully on issues such as media legislation. The vote was a huge defeat for those pushing the full monitoring procedure.

Mike Hancock, a member of the Parliamentary Assembly from the Liberal Democrats of the UK and one of the initiators of the modified resolution that was accepted, said that there was nothing about Hungary that should merit such an extreme measure as a monitoring procedure.

The government of Hungary’s position remains the same. We’re open to criticism when it is fair and fact-based and, in such cases, have made amendments to our legislation.

For its part, the Council of Europe has also spoken clearly. It is a respected international body that will not be exploited for political purposes. But 2014 will be a year of European elections, bringing a new European Parliament and Commission, as well as parliamentary elections in Hungary, so we should not expect that we’ve seen the last of such attempts to use such methods for political gain.

Source: A Blog About Hungary

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