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“God and country, the pride of the nation of ethnic Hungarians, the state defined as a ‘national essence’ and not as a republic, less power for constitutional judges and even more for the government: while such talk may sound rather akin to the European authoritarianism of the 1920s and 1930s, it is actually the new constitution of a member of NATO and the current holder of the EU presidency,” writes an alarmed La Repubblica the day after the Hungarian Parliament adopted the new law of the land. “And the EU remains silent,” laments the Rome daily, which maintains that by leaving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán free to act as he wishes, “Europe is moving away from the values of the rule of law.”
La Repubblica notes that “faith and the cult of the Crown of St. Stephen – the national symbol used by the pro-Nazi regimes of Horty and Szálasi – silence about those bloody years, and national pride as a fundamental value” is what the Constitution advances. “Church and family, and priority to protecting the unborn. Not a word about the rights of minorities, Jews, Gypsies and gays.”
“The vision of being a chosen people among all the peoples of Europe has always brought calamity to the continent,” writes the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which fears the “arrogance of Hungary.” The centre-left daily regrets that the Constitution “advances emotional claims of the Hungarians to be a unique people in Central Europe.” And finally, the constitution puts forth Hungary as the representative in principle “of all Magyars, even the three million living in neighbouring countries.” It is, therefore, up to the EU to ensure the “democratisation of the Hungarian Constitution” and to prevent “emotional nationalism from poisoning Central Europe.”
In contrast, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung holds that the Constitution, despite its flaws, gives Viktor Orbán “the foundation for a more efficient government.” Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the conservative daily writes, Hungary has wanted to replace the Stalinist Constitution that was revised in 1989. “For the vast majority of Hungarians, the ‘National Creed’ and the crown of St. Stephen are values just as constitutional as the explicit reference to God and Christianity, as well as to marriage and family as the foundation of society and the state,” adds the FAZ, for nowhere in the text, “does one find any provision that ‘disagrees with the fundamental values of Europe’, as Orbán’s opponents claim.”
