Press freedom 'sacred' to EU, says Barroso
Jose Manuel Barroso - photo EC
(BRUSSELS) - Freedom of the press is "sacred" to Europe, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said Wednesday ahead of talks this week with the Hungarian authorities.
Barroso on Friday meets the Budapest government that took over the rotating European Union presidency on January 1, the same day its fiercely-contested new press legislation passed into law.
"I am going to discuss this issue" with Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Barroso told journalists.
"Freedom of the press is a sacred principle, a fundamental value" of the EU, he added.
Earlier, commission spokesman Olivier Bailly said Brussels had received a translation of Hungary's controversial 194-page law and its legal experts were checking whether it complied with all EU legislation.
"This analysis will take some time and is unlikely to be completed by Friday," when the commission meets Orban's government to usher in the country's six-month term at the helm of the 27-nation bloc, he said.
Hungary insisted Tuesday it would not bow to outside pressure and rethink the disputed law, although the European Commission expressed concerns and said it would sanction Budapest if necessary -- even during its EU presidency.
"It isn't necessary to change a Hungarian law just because it is subject to criticism from abroad," Zoltan Kovacs, state secretary for communication, told national radio.
"Before criticising, let's wait and see how this law works. We are confident it will be up to the task," he added.
However Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi seemed to imply some room for manoeuvre Wednesday.
"Let's wait for the comments of the European Commission, then we'll see how the situation can be remedied," he told foreign journalists in Budapest.
"We'll see what kind of comments, criticism will be made and then we can sit down together (to talk)," he said.
The disputed legislation gives a new regulatory authority, the NMHH, the right to impose fines of up to 720,000 euros for material that is considered offensive.
The authority -- headed by a close ally of Orban -- also has the right to inspect documents and force journalists to reveal sources in issues related to national security.
The media law has drawn criticism from opposition politicians and journalists in Hungary, as well as the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), Amnesty International, the European parliament and several European governments, such as Germany and France.
On Tuesday, Berlin said Hungary should not even be entitled to express EU opinions on media freedom during talks with countries such as Ukraine or Belarus.
"The right to speak in the name of Europe naturally implies a duty to respect internal European norms to be able to represent them to the outside world in credible fashion," said German deputy foreign minister Werner Hoyer.
Aside from the media debate, Hungary has also come under fire over a "crisis" tax, which has angered a number of major European firms.
The European Commission is investigating whether that too was in compliance with the bloc's regulations.
The new tax was introduced in October on the telecommunications, energy and retail sectors for three years to help replenish state coffers and bring down the public deficit.
Along with the media debate, this has tarnished Hungary's EU presidency, even before the EU executive descends on Budapest for the inauguration celebrations.