Hungary PM claims EU migrant quota referendum victory - but is it a victory ?

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has declared victory in a referendum on mandatory EU migrant quotas, despite a low turnout that appeared to render it invalid.

Nearly 98% of those who took part supported the government's call to reject the EU plan.

But only 43% of the electorate voted, short of the 50% required to be valid.

Note EU-Digest: The Hungarian referendum was declared void and illegal because voter participation was 43 %, well below the allowed 50 % threshold and in reality a vote of no- confidence for the PM because the opposition had told their supporters to abstain from voting.

Read more: Hungary PM claims EU migrant quota referendum victory - BBC News

EU Rule of Law Crises: Europe’s Rule-of-Law "obstructed by Hungary and Poland "- by Guy Verhofstadt

Rule of Law - one of the basic princiles of Democracy

From the rubble of two world wars, European countries came together to launch what would become the world’s largest experiment in unification and cooperative, shared sovereignty. But, despite its impressive achievements over the decades, the European project now risks disintegration.

An unresolved financial crisis, a refugee crisis, a deteriorating security environment, and a stalled integration process have created throughout Europe a toxic, unstable political environment in which populism and nationalism thrive. Perhaps the clearest manifestation of this is the erosion of the rule of law in the European Union.

Two EU members in particular, Hungary and Poland, are now jeopardizing hard-won European democratic norms – and thus undermining the very purpose of European integration.

In Hungary, liberal-democratic values have come under systematic attack from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government. Since his return to the premiership in 2010, Orbán has committed Hungary to an authoritarian nationalist path, and he has exploited the refugee crisis to cement a “siege mentality” that helps him sustain popular support.

In the process, fundamental rights have been ignored, media freed refugees have been demonized, and Orbán is doing everything in his power to weaken the EU. Attempts by EU institutions to convince Orbán to change course have only emboldened him to commit further outrages against democratic norms.

Meanwhile, a democratic crisis has emerged in Poland as well, starting last October, when the Law and Justice (PiS), a Euroskeptic party that also opposes immigration, secured an outright parliamentary majority by promising to implement populist economic policies and “put Poland first.” Yet, since the election, PiS has launched a series of attacks on the Polish constitution itself.

Government legislation aimed at reforming Poland’s Constitutional Court has been condemned by the Court itself and the European democracy watchdog, the Venice Commission. The government has effectively precluded the Court from ruling on the constitutionality of legislation. This weakens a key pillar of the democratic rule of law – and thus is highly problematic for Poland and Europe alike.

Hungary and Poland are the leading edge of a far-right agenda that has taken hold throughout Europe, pursued by parties that are exploiting the political vacuum created by the EU’s failure to address the financial and refugee crises. So how can the tables be turned?

In democratic countries, it is vital that democracy’s enemies be fought with democratic means. It is vital that the outside world impress on the Hungarian and Polish people themselves that in a globalized world, nationalism offers only false security and economic irrelevance. Both countries, at the heart of Europe, have profited enormously in every sense from EU membership; they must not throw away their opportunity to make further progress.

Hungarians and Poles rejected international isolation in 1989. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, both countries became staunch NATO allies even before they joined the EU. The geopolitical and security arguments for European unity are overwhelming, and there can be no united Europe without Hungary and Poland.

But all of us, and in particular the peoples of Hungary and Poland, must remember that NATO, like the EU, was founded on the fundamental principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. A government that flouts those principles jeopardizes the coherence and solidarity of the alliance. It is therefore vital that the United States and other NATO allies speak out now and insist that functioning democratic checks and balances are safeguarded. It would be unimaginable for NATO heads of state to go ahead with their planned leadership summit in Warsaw in June if Poland remains in its constitutional crisis, with the government disregarding the rule of law and the opinion of a respected international body.

Hungarians and Poles must be reminded that Russian President Vladimir Putin is actively attempting to divide and weaken the EU and NATO. If Europe is to face down aggression from the Kremlin, it is essential that Poland and Hungary adhere to these groups’ fundamental values and principles.

But it is also necessary that the EU itself develop a more comprehensive mechanism for safeguarding the rule of law within the Union. The EU has mechanisms to regulate economic policies, safeguard the environment, and police the Single Market. But Europe has always been much more than an economic project; it is also a union of values, which no member can be allowed to repudiate without consequence.

Governments are created and fall apart, and politicians come and go; but democratic institutions should be spared from political interference. The sad reality is that, were they to apply for EU membership today, neither Hungary nor Poland would be admitted. Their people should weigh carefully what that means. 

Their current leaders claim to be defending national interests. But is it really in their countries’ interest to be sidelined by the US, NATO, and the rest of Europe?

Note EU-Digest: Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, is President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE) in the European Parliament. 

NATO's Planned June Leadership in June should be cancelled if Hungary and Poland  both continue to obstruct  the fundamental principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law on which not only the EU was founded but also the NATO.

EU-Digest

Christianity: Where is the faith, love, and compassion today, displayed by Christians during the Constantinople plague? - by RM

Constantinople during  the Justinian Plague (541-542)

The Plague of Justinian (541–542) was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, especially its capital Constantinople, the Sassanid Empire, and port cities around the entire Mediterranean Sea.

One of the greatest plagues in history, this devastating pandemic resulted in the deaths of an estimated 25 million (initial outbreak) to 50 million (two centuries of recurrence) people.

The outbreak in Constantinople was thought to have been carried to the city by infected rats on grain ships arriving from Egypt. To feed its citizens, the city and outlying communities imported massive amounts of grain—mostly from Egypt. Grain ships may have been the original source of contagion, as the rat (and flea) population in Egypt thrived on feeding from the large granaries maintained by the government. The Byzantine historian Procopius first reported the epidemic in 541 from the port of Pelusium, near Suez in Egypt.

Two other first-hand reports of the plague's ravages were by the Syriac church historian John of Ephesus and Evagrius Scholasticus, who was a child in Antioch at the time and later became a church historian. Evagrius was afflicted with the buboes associated with the disease but survived. During the disease's four returns in his lifetime, he lost his wife, a daughter and her child, other children, most of his servants, and people from his country estate.[

Remarkable at that time, when Constantinolep was ravaged by the plague, was that instead of fear and despondency, the Christians expended themselves in works of mercy that simply dumbfounded the local pagans and made many convert to Christianity

For the Christians of those days, God loved humanity; and in order to love God back, one was to love others. God did not demand ritual sacrifices; or having "infidels" heads cut off.  Instead he wanted his love expressed on earth in deeds of compassion.

This love took on very practical, concrete forms not only in Constantinople (todays Istanbul), but also in Rome,where  the Christians buried not just their own, but also pagans who had died without funds for a proper burial.

They also supplied food for 1,500 poor on a daily basis. In Antioch in Syria (today in Turkey), the number of destitute persons being fed by the church had reached 3,000. Church funds were even used in special cases to buy the emancipation of Christian slaves.

During the Plague in Alexandria( Egypt) when nearly everyone else fled, the early Christians risked their lives for one another by simple deeds of washing the sick, offering water and food, and consoling the dying. Their care was so extensive that Emporor Julian eventually tried to copy the church’s welfare system. It failed, however, because for the Christians it was love, not duty, that motivated them.

The first Christians not only took care of their own, but also reached out far beyond themselves. Their faith led to a pandemic of love. Consequently, at the risk of their own lives, they saved an immense number of lives. Their elementary nursing greatly reduced mortality. Simple provisions of food and water allowed the sick that were temporarily too weak to cope for themselves to recover instead of perishing miserably.

Pagans could not help but notice that Christians not only found the strength to risk death, but through their care for one another they were much less likely to die. Christian survivors of the plague became immune, and therefore they were able to pass among the afflicted with seeming invulnerability. In fact, those most active in nursing the sick were the very ones who had already contracted the disease very early on but who were also cared for by their brothers and sisters.

In this way, the early Christians became, in the words of one scholar, “a whole force of miracle workers to heal the ‘dying.’” Or as historian Rodney Spark puts it, “It was the soup [the Christians] so patiently spooned to the helpless that healed them.”

In the midst of intermittent persecution and colossal misunderstanding, and in an era when serving others was thought to be demeaning, the “followers of the way,” instead of fleeing disease and death, went about ministering to the sick and helping the poor, the widowed, the crippled, the blind, the orphaned and the aged.

Consequently the  citizens of the Roman Empire started to admire their works and dedication. “Look how they love one another,” was often heard on the streets. In a way it became contagious.

So much seems to have changed from then to now, as to how the Christian Community functions as a part of the society at large, and, unfortunately, this change has not always been for the better. 

All we have to do is look at the refugee crises the EU is facing today and see how self-centered and hypocritical  most "so called"  Christian politicians are responding to this crises.

We can certainly learn from those early Christians. 

EU-Digest

EU: Will Populist Parties Run (Ruin) Europe? - by Judy Dempsey

Populism and Nationalism, two destructive political forces

Populism is on the rise in Europe but is unlikely to win enough votes to run Europe. Yet the risk that populism will run Europe by proxy is real if mainstream governments do not address the phenomenon’s underlying causes.

Leaders of the center-right and center-left are racing to embrace right-wing populist demagoguery in the hope of catching a few votes. This tactic does not pay off, as Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico discovered in Slovakia’s parliamentary election on March 5. His embrace of the right-wing anti-immigration card boosted far-right parties more than his own. If voters want xenophobia, they will choose the real thing.

But Fico’s experience does not seem to be persuading mainstream politicians to stop chasing right-wing populism. Governments’ responses to the refugee influx are paralyzed by a fear of populism’s rise in upcoming elections.

Worse still, populists are framing the way in which the refugee challenge is debated. These fears are blocking the emergence of alternative solutions, in turn giving populists even more ammunition. If mainstream politics does not recapture the debate with alternative proposals and a vocabulary that reflects its principles (those that have held Europe together), it will put itself at the mercy of a populist minority.

Contrary to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s boldest dreams, illiberal national populists will not run Europe anytime soon. In many countries, the shrinking center still just about holds. But this should provide little comfort. Populists don’t need to run Europe to ruin it. Of course, the poison works best in countries where authoritarian populists control the government. The proudly illiberal regimes of Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice Party, would fail to meet the Copenhagen criteria for acceding EU states.

But populists do not need to control the government to feed on and fuel a new age of fear in Europe: fear of the Other (especially Muslims) and fear of global competition. Populists’ seemingly easy answers—pull up the national drawbridge to keep Muslims and competition out—put pressure on terrified establishment elites and drag political culture to previously unseen lows, depriving policymaking of the oxygen of reason.

This trend is now also threatening to engulf Germany, so far one of the last islands of liberal democratic normalcy. If you want to know what a neurotic Germany feels like, take Bavarian Minister President Horst Seehofer as a harbinger of things to come. Not a pretty prospect for the dream of a self-confident liberal Europe in the twenty-first century.

Populist parties already run many European countries. Look at Central and Eastern Europe, where populists formally make up the government, or at France and the UK, where they set the tone of the political debate to a greater or lesser degree. There are reasons to believe that populist and other fringe political forces will increasingly shape Europe’s political landscape and polarize it along liberal versus illiberal or globalist versus territorialist dividing lines.

But the real question is not whether populists are likely to grab power in one or two more EU member states—although a French presidency led by the far-right National Front’s Marine Le Pen would be the end of Europe as we know it. The real (and currently materializing) threat is that so-called mainstream parties will gradually give up their fundamental principles of human rights, civil liberties, equality, and openness out of panic fear of a populist surge.

The rise of populism is sometimes a high but inevitable price to pay for a firm policy of not bowing to external pressures. The right-wing Alternative for Germany versus Chancellor Angela Merkel is a case in point. Perhaps Europe needs to accept this price. And instead of seeking to accommodate populists, Europe should try to mobilize those large parts of society that have lost not only confidence in the elites but also the belief that the stakes in today’s politics are high. If liberal democracy and open societies fall in Europe, it will happen by default, not because of an outright rejection by the people.

Read more: Judy Asks: Will Populist Parties Run Europe? - Carnegie Europe - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Political Revolution?: The People Have Woken Up - Political Establishment in Europe And US Is In Trouble - by RM

French revolution 1789 until 1799

When you look at it closely there really is not much difference today between the EU and US when measuring the  public opinion in both areas as to how their ruling political establishment is perceived.

Polls show they both consider them unreliable and "in the pocket" of  private interest groups and lobbyists.

In a way this reaction is also a refreshing development. Slowly but surely in both America and in many countries around Europe people are waking up to the fact that many politicians within their political establishment, on both the left and the right, are not really representing the people who elected them anymore, but rather their own interests.

In fact, most of the polls taken on this issue seem to indicate that many voters now feel that they have been completely sold out by their political elite.

They are also angry about the steady takeover of their liberties by unregulated global corporate forces, and the fact that their elected Governments are doing very little to stop it.

Hence we see the rise of  a new breed of somewhat unorthodox people successfully entering the political arena in the US - like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Same is happening in Europe, with the likes of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Marie Le Pen in France, Nigel Farage in Britain, Victor Orban in Hungary, Alexis Tsipras in Greece, and .Pablo Iglesias in Spain, to mention just a few.

Could this be the beginning of a total shake-up and possibly even a peoples revolution changing the existing "fault-lines" of today's political and economic structures in both the USA and the EU ?

It looks like the party has only just begun.

EU-Digest

Europe 'Disgraced Itself' Over Refugee Quota Failure: German Vice Chancellor - by Jack Moore

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has condemned European Union member states for failing to agree on mandatory quotas to spread the burden of the refugee crisis, saying on Tuesday that the economic bloc had "disgraced itself."

"Europe once again disgraced itself yesterday," Gabriel said, the day after EU ministers failed to reach an agreement in Brussels over a proposal to absorb 120,000 refugees around the union's member states.

Germany has been the EU member to accept the most refugees, with more than 800,000 people moving into the country this year alone. Other EU member states has been more hesitant on the issue, with countries such as Hungary and Slovakia resisting calls for a mandatory refugee quota.

Read more: Europe 'Disgraced Itself' Over Refugee Quota Failure: German Vice Chancellor

Far Right Dangers in Europe: "In parts of Europe, the far right rises again" - by Sonni Efron

As Europe marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, the war that destroyed Old Europe, far-right parties are gaining ground across New Europe.

Most of the far-right parties are pro-Russia, opposing U.S. and European Union efforts to isolate President Vladimir Putin for his intervention in Ukraine. They are expected to do well in the May 25 European Parliament elections.

Last month, I traveled to Hungary and Greece, where the neo-fascist movements are strongest. In Hungary, the extreme-right Jobbik party won 1 in 5 votes in last month's parliamentary election. In Greece, even as the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party is being prosecuted by the government as a criminal organization, it remains the fourth-largest political party in the country. Golden Dawn lawmaker Ilias Kasidiaris, who sports a swastika tattoo and once read from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" on the floor of Parliament, is running for mayor of Athens.

Both parties deny being inherently anti-Semitic or anti-Roma, but their symbols and rhetoric suggest otherwise. Party leaders are unapologetically hostile to LGBT rights, and Golden Dawn is vehemently anti-immigrant. And in both Greece and Hungary, many voters appear to be either overlooking the neo-fascist message or embracing it.

Despite international condemnation of Jobbik's anti-Semitic, anti-Roma vitriol, support for the party rose from 18% in the 2010 elections to 21% last month. Among those reelected to office was a Jobbik member of parliament who demanded that the government draw up a list of Jews in official positions because they posed a "national security risk." Another winning candidate claimed that "the Gypsy people are a biological weapon" of the Israelis who have "occupied" Hungary. These are not idle words in a country where Roma have been terrorized or killed in organized attacks.

Read more: In parts of Europe, the far right rises again - Los Angeles Times

Soccer : Netherlands thrashes Hungary 8-1 in qualifier

Dutch Soccer Team celebrates 8-1 win over Hungary

Robin van Persie scored a hat trick Friday to become the all-time Dutch top scorer as the Netherlands thrashed Hungary 8-1 in a World Cup qualifier.

The Netherlands had already qualified for next year's finals, and Hungary's hopes of consolidating second place in Group D were erased by a vintage Dutch performance.

With Romania beating Andorra 4-0 and Turkey downing Estonia 2-0, second place in the group is still up for grabs with one round to go.

Umut Bulut opened the scoring in the 22nd minute for Turkey in Estonia and Burak Yilmaz made it 2-0 in the 47th to Take Turkey into second in the group, ahead of Romania on goal difference.

Andorra managed to restrict visiting Romania to a Claudiu Keseru goal in the first half, but Bogdan Stancu, Gabriel Torje and Costin Lazar all scored as Romania stamped its class on the Group D minnow after the break.

Turkey and Romania's wins took them ahead of Hungary, level on 16 points.

In next week's final matches, Turkey faces a tough match against the Netherlands in Istanbul, Romania hosts Estonia and Hungary has a home game against Andorra.

Read more: AMSTERDAM: Netherlands thrashes Hungary 8-1 in qualifier - Soccer | Fútbol - MiamiHerald.com