Shaun Walker - Hungary passes 'slave law' prompting fury among opposition MPs
The Hungarian government has passed a set
of controversial laws amid scenes of chaos, as opposition MPs sounded sirens,
blew whistles and angrily confronted the country’s rightwing prime minister,
Viktor Orbán. One of the new laws raises the amount of overtime employers can
demand their employees work and has been labelled a “slave law” by critics.
Another establishes new courts to consider government business with a greater
role for the justice minister.
Their passing into law provoked a rare show
of defiance from the fractured and demoralised opposition, heavily outnumbered
in a chamber where Orbán’s Fidesz party commands a two-thirds majority. Opposition
MPs attempted to block the podium while one livestreamed footage as he
approached Orbán and shouted questions at him. It is unclear whether the MPs’
actions will lead to a crackdown. The
parliament speaker, László Kövér, said the opposition’s “attempt at obstruction
was unprecedented in 28 years of Hungarian democracy”.
Orbán has been accused
of a piecemeal takeover of previously independent institutions, as well as
extending government control over the majority of Hungarian media outlets. The
judiciary has remained relatively independent but the new legislation will mean
the country’s supreme court no longer has the final say in so-called
administrative disputes, which cover a wide range of issues including electoral
practice and corruption cases. It puts Orbán on a further collision course with
the European parliament, which has already voted
to begin disciplinary proceedings against Hungary over rule of law
issues. The government has
promised the new courts will be independent of political interference but the
justice minister will have a major role in appointing the judges and also
oversight of the budget for the courts.
The human rights group the Hungarian
Helsinki Committee said the legislation was “a serious threat to the rule of
law in Hungary and runs counter to values Hungary signed up to
when it joined the European Union”. The overtime law drew
thousands of protesters onto the streets over the weekend, who called for a
rise in wages rather than a rise in permitted overtime hours. The government
has said it will allow employers to be more flexible. “We have to remove
bureaucratic rules so that those who want to work and earn more can do so,”
Orbán said in defence of the legislation this week. Since winning a two-thirds
parliamentary majority in April after an election campaign dominated largely by
aggressive anti-immigration rhetoric, Orbán has brushed off international
criticism and continued to cement his grip on power.
The US ambassador in
Budapest, David Cornstein, said
when he arrived in summer that the Trump administration wanted new,
positive relations with Orbán and would not criticise the government, but asked
that Hungary find a way to allow the US-accredited Central European University
to stay in Budapest. But Orbán’s government refused to sign an agreement with
the university and last
week said it
would move the bulk of its operations to Vienna from 2019.
Hungary has also
irritated EU and Nato allies by giving safe haven to the fugitive former
Macedonian prime minister Nikola Gruevski, who was due to start a jail sentence
in his home country last month, but instead fled to Budapest with the help of
Hungarian diplomats and was swiftly
granted asylum.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/12/hungary-passes-slave-law-prompting-fury-among-opposition-mpsSee alsoOn Post-Fascism: How citizenship is becoming an exclusive privilege by G. M. Tamás
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