EU sanctions hanging over Hungary
February 22nd, 2012A left wing commentator believes the European Union is disproportionately severe in its threats to Hungary, but likens the behaviour of the Hungarian government to that of a naughty schoolboy.
“The European Commission has visibly lost its patience towards Hungary,“ Edit Inotai comments in Népszabadság.
The left-wing columnist blames the Hungarian government for behaving over the past eighteen months like a naughty schoolboy who now faces the danger of losing his pocket money.
Hungary is in fact facing a procedure at the end of which the country might be denied access to the Union’s cohesion fund in 2013. Inotai remarks that out of the numerous countries under excessive deficit procedure, including Greece, Poland, Belgium and Cyprus, Hungary is the only one under threat of financial sanctions. The difference between them is that the others have not repeatedly and demonstratively confronted Brussels for over a year. “We are behaving as if we were not part of the EU. Are we testing what life is really like outside the Union?” Inotai asks. Misbehaving boys, she concludes, usually end up either being expelled from school, or growing up.