Europeans have no “right to country, family and God”, says Orban

According to a letter on Orban’s website, the government is obliged to defend the national constitution. Orban said that the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg had ordered last week to allow migrants that were stopped at the border fence into the country. Orban says this is contrary to the country’s fundamental law, writes Hungary Today.

In Hungary, it has been evident since the migration crisis in 2015 that the country does not want immigrants. Other member states, like Germany, France and the Netherlands, have a long tradition of immigration and are quite open to asylum seekers. Countries in Central Europa are not. But the European judge ruled that Hungary is obliged to give asylum seekers the possibility to fill in their application.

Statement reminds of Poland

Orban’s statement calls in remembrance the recent verdict of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, saying that the national legislation can sometimes be more robust than the European. The consequences of that are still unclear. The initial reaction from the EU side was that the EU as an internal market cannot function without standard rules and that national sovereignty makes integration difficult.

Prime Minister Orban speaks about the importance of the ”historical population”. That concept is not known in the EU, says Orban, since the individual is the only known person.

“Traditional communities have been rendered utterly defenceless,” he writes. “Today, Europeans do not have the right to decide on those with whom they wish to live in their own country — even when mass immigration leads to the disintegration of the traditional communities that form the basis of their own identities as individuals. Ultimately, in terms of fundamental rights, Europeans today have no right to their country, their language, their culture, their family and their God.”

Orbán writes a recent ruling of the Constitutional Court “takes a stand against this”. The government has to defend the homeland, he concludes from a court’s decision from early December. “The Hungarian state has a duty to prevent serious violations of individuals’ identity — even if such violations come from a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union or from deficiencies in the EU’s exercise of power. The traditional social environment of people living in Hungary must not be allowed to change without a democratic mandate and oversight by the state.”

“A homeland only exists where rights also exist. And according to the Constitutional Court of Hungary, Hungarians have the right to their own homeland,” he concludes.