Thread by @JohnOBrennan2

Yesterday, Hungary again became a dictatorship.

How does the European Commission and President @vonderleyen respond? With the most tepid press release possible, one that doesn’t even mention Hungary, or Viktor Orban.
A short thread on why this matters. /
ec.europa.eu/commission/pre…

Although Hungary has been the subject of an Art 7 procedure, this had nothing to do with the Commission. Rather it was Judith Sargentini + @Europarl_EN who pushed for action against Hungary, outlining (in Sept 2018) "a systemic threat" to democracy. 2/
theguardian.com/world/2018/sep…

From the moment Orban came back to power in 2010, his approach was one of 'salami slicing' of Hungary's pluralist institutions and stringing Brussels along. The European Commission and the European Council stood by, year after year and did virtually nothing. 3/

Inaction by the EU's most important bodies facilitated a ceaseless trajectory of 'incremental authoritarianism'.
For more on this 'authoritarian equilibrium' see this superb distillation of events/responses/conceptualization by Prof @rdanielkelemen 4/

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

For more empirical detail about 'the rise of populism on the Danube and Vistula', see this piece I wrote with @michaelfjtoomey almost two years ago for @RTEBrainstorm
rte.ie/brainstorm/201… 5/

And anybody who thinks this resort to full blown authoritarianism will be confined within the EU to Hungary just hasn't been paying attention for the last 5 years. In Poland the stated ambition of PiS leaders is to create "Budapest on the Vistula". 6/

This has recently been termed a turn to 'Caesarean politics' in Hungary and Poland, where radical changes are framed as "politics as usual". The arrival of Covid19 provides the perfect pretext to move in this radical direction. 7/
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

the Commission statement may not mention Hungary, but it does specifically highlight press freedom as an issue of central concern. Last year's Press Freedom index showed Hungary plummeting to no. 87 in the world. (Bulgaria is much worse again , at 111)
rsf.org/en/ranking_tab… 8/

EU has a VAST amount of info, collected by independent think tanks/civil society orgs, documenting the lurch towards authoritarianism. The @freedomhouse Nations in Transit reports on Hungary, demonstrate the "largest cumulative decline" ever recorded. 9/
freedomhouse.org/report/nations…

As @ProfPech has shown, we have seen little from EU actors except the most timid criticisms of Orban. While the Commission has opted for toothless dialogue again and again, Orban's salami-slicing continued, gutting the post-1989 institutions in Hungary.10/

https://twitter.com/ProfPech/status/1244949152137646083

V-Dem is another body that has consistently tracked democratic regression and decline in Hungary.
Its reports are well worth reading. 11/
v-dem.net/en/news/democr…

Similarly, IDEA's 2019 Global State of Democracy, provides excellent data, mapping the extent of democratic decline. 12/
idea.int/publications/c…

So this is a story of 'facilitated authoritarianism'. It isn't just the EU's inaction which matters here. More than any other actor the @EPPGroup @EPP bears enormous responsibility. While Orban was 'salami slicing' Hungarian pluralism, senior EPP figures did nothing. 13/

Those arguing the EU should “give Article 7 a chance” are, in effect, arguing for the status quo. Why? Because Article 7 TEU is essentially inoperable. The thresholds for triggering action are too high and there is too much ambiguity, allowing Orban and others room to slither.14/

Again, Prof Laurent Pech and his colleagues have done extraordinary work to investigate/assess/evaluate the modalities around Article 7 and what the EU was doing (or not doing) within the confines of that process.

https://twitter.com/profpech/status/1180081150406082560?lang=en

The EU could (and should) have been prepared to use the tools at its disposal, even if those tools were limited in design and scope. It mostly refused to do so, preferring endless, useless "dialogue". In Orban's case, from the beginning, this was a "dialogue of the deaf". 15/

So where are we now? The EU has a fully fledged dictatorship nestled within its structures. The timidity only encourages the thugs in Budapest. Don't think other autocrats in waiting aren't watching this carefully and planning their own "special measures". 17/
ENDS