Foreign Minister János Martonyi believes that it is difficult to put up a defence against accusations that are unfounded and general in nature, whereas concrete remarks can be properly addressed, and so Hungary is expecting a detailed explanation and reasoning from the European Commission about what its precise concerns are with respect to the fourth amendment of the Fundamental Law.

Speaking on InfoRádió's “Arena” programme on April 29, the Hungarian Foreign Minister explained: the European Parliament is also a domain for party political battles and competition; left wing parties are attacking Hungary extremely strongly and also wish to make the topic a theme of the election campaign, which means that they are also attacking their own political competitors. It is difficult to handle politically and ideologically inspired general accusations – he pointed out.

János Martonyi recalled: José Manuel Barroso indicated earlier in a letter that infringement procedures might be launched against Hungary because of certain issues related to the amendment of the Fundamental Law. Concrete questions can be resolved if they are raised, therefore the Hungarian government expects the EU body to explain its concerns in detail – he said. “If there are indeed serious problems” then it is not in the interests of Hungary to have the infringement procedure pursued to its end and the Government would prefer to reach an agreement – said János Martonyi.

The Minister also said that the decision to end the excessive deficit procedure against Hungary should only take into consideration the figures and objective facts, and that any political considerations should be left out; no room should be left for double standards. He said that the Government expects the procedure to be lifted, because this is what the numbers would justify: the 1,9% budget deficit for 2012 is an especially great success. If the Commission will truly only consider the figures and results achieved, then it will issue a forecast on the status of the Hungarian economy that will pave the way for the decision of the European Council to later lift the procedure – said the Minister.

He highlighted that it may give rise to concerns if the Commission were to think that even if the Hungarian results are good, the economic policies used to achieve them are not what the EU body expects of a country and are not what it articulated in its country specific recommendations. This could accordingly also give rise to a “subjective element”, which is “no longer about numbers” – János Martonyi pointed out. He said that one could not exclude the possibility that political considerations might also “come into play”, but if factors beyond economic ones are taken into account when deciding on the case of any Member State, then the whole procedure stands to lose its credibility.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs)