This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Finland has pledged to pursue a hearing into alleged breaches of the rule of law by Hungary’s far-right government after a campaign of vilification led by the prime minister, Viktor Orbán.

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Orbán and his spokesman, Zoltán Kovács, have launched a series of attacks in recent weeks ranging from criticism of the level of domestic violence in Finland to the purchase of strategically important Finnish islands by Russian oligarchs.

As the member state holding the EU’s rolling presidency until the new year, the Finnish government is responsible for chairing meetings of the member states and pushing forward the bloc’s agenda.

The European parliament took the unprecedented step last September of asking member states to determine whether Hungary had breached the bloc’s founding values in its overhaul of the country’s judiciary and alleged failure to respect freedom of expression, religion and equal treatment under the law.

In the most recent broadside, Kovács, who is Hungary’s secretary of state for international communication and relations, wrote that Finland “doesn’t have a constitutional court, independent judiciary or press freedom, it also shows signs of other serious problems as well”.

He raised the “petrifying” numbers of women undergoing female genital mutilation and the “grave threat” facing “freshly settled religious minorities”.

The Economist’s annual democracy index ranks Finland as having among the most democratic systems in the world.

When its government assumed the presidency on 1 July it said it would respect the parliament’s vote in favour of pursuing the so-called article 7 process, under which Hungary could theoretically face the “nuclear” sanction of having its voting rights in EU institutions suspended.

On the eve of the vote, Orbán had told MEPs that his country was being targeted for choosing not to be “a country of migrants” and dismissed charges of corruption.

His spokesman’s article last month was in part a response to a defence of Finland’s duty to pursue the issue by Petri Tuomi-Nikula, a former Finnish ambassador to Hungary, who had written that the country was “one of the most corrupt … in the union”.

A spokesman for the Finnish government said the latest developments would not prevent it from “taking forward the ongoing procedures concerning the rule of law as appropriate”.

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The spokesman said: “The article 7 procedure has been triggered, in the case of Hungary, by the European parliament. The treaty indicates that the next step will be a hearing in the council of the country concerned.

“The Finnish presidency believes Hungary has the right to be heard and that it is also in its best interest.”

The spokesman said the parliament had voted “nearly a year ago, so we think it is high time to move to the hearings. For some time already, a large number of member states have been demanding that hearings should begin.

“The article 7 procedure should not be seen as a process directed against a particular member state. The rule of law is part of our shared value basis and something that unites us all. We believe we must cherish it. The Finnish presidency intends to promote rule of law issues through a positive and constructive approach.”

Fabian Zuleeg, from the European Policy Centre, a Brussels thinktank said the stakes for Orbán over the rule of law would be greater if France successfully argued that EU funding should be linked to respect for the bloc’s treaties.

“A greater focus on rule of law was always going to produce a counter reaction by Hungary, which under Orbán has always argued that its democracy is as good as anywhere else in Europe, and that any comments or actions reflect different political ideologies,” he said.

“But the real political fight is still to come when the EU gets into the final phase of agreeing the next multi-annual financial framework. Here, a lot is at stake for Orbán if funding is made conditional on rule of law, which a number of western countries want to push for.”