The report of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reflects the influence of NGOs

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) published its Fundamental Rights Report 2022 (hereinafter: Report) on 8 June 2022.

The FRA is an independent reference and centre of excellence for the promotion and protection of human rights in the European Union (hereinafter: EU). Through its work, it provides evidence-based advice to EU and national decision-makers, thereby informing them and helping to better target fundamental rights debates, policies, and legislation. The document compiled by the FRA is in line not only in terms of content with the European Commission’s (hereinafter: EC) annual reports on the rule of law but also in the fact that both contain political-ideological allegations, disguised as legal issues, against countries whose governments do not embrace the ideology of open societies and do not share the liberal ideas that dominate Western public life.

The document has eight chapters:

1. Equality and non-discrimination
2. Racism, xenophobia, and related tolerance
3. Equality and inclusion of the Roma
4. Asylum, visas, migration, borders, and integration
5. Information society, privacy, and data protection
6. Children’s rights
7. Access to justice
8. Development in the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Already the first chapter of the Report supports gender propaganda and condemns Hungary for its child and family protection measures, with special emphasis on Article L (1) and Article XVI (1) of the Fundamental Law of Hungary (hereinafter: Fundamental Law). The two provisions include the following:

• Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman established by voluntary decision, and the family as a basis of the survival of the nation. Family ties shall be based on marriage or the relationship between parents and children. The mother shall be a woman, the father shall be a man. (Article L (1) of the Fundamental Law).

• Every child shall have the right to the protection and care necessary for his or her proper physical, mental and moral development. Hungary shall protect the right of children to a self-identity corresponding to their sex at birth and shall ensure an upbringing for them that is in accordance with the values based on the constitutional identity and Christian culture of our country. (Article XVI (1) of the Fundamental Law).

It is important to make a distinction between a “right” and an “institution”. Marriage falls into the latter category. While no one can be deprived of the former without good and legitimate reason, there may be certain preconditions for marriage, including gender and age. Already the National Avowal of the Fundamental Law refers to the importance of our Christian traditions, and Article R (4) states that “The protection of the constitutional identity and Christian culture of Hungary shall be an obligation of every organ of the State.”

Recognition of same-sex people as spouses is incompatible with the Christian interpretation of marriage. However, this does not constitute deprivation of rights.

Article XV (1) of the Fundamental Law declares non-discrimination and, accordingly, same-sex people may cohabitate, which may be officially registered in accordance with the provisions of Act XXIX of 2009 on Registered Partnership and Related Legislation and on the Amendment of Other Statutes to Facilitate the Proof of Cohabitation. When somebody challenges that the mother is a woman and the father is a man, they are essentially questioning an axiom. The right of children to proper physical, mental and moral development is indisputable, which is closely related to the fact that as long as they do not have full capacity to act and they decide not to do so, they shall not be subjected to often irreversible treatment such as gender reassignment.

The Report mentions two cases that could be interpreted as an attack on the LGBT community by serious misinterpretation:

• On 19 January, the National Consumer Protection Authority required the publisher to indicate in children’s books that they depict “behaviour other than traditional gender roles”,

• In March 2021, the Media Council filed a lawsuit against RTL Klub for broadcasting a community promotional video of “A Family is a Family” featuring rainbow families before 9 p.m.

The argument of the EC is that this constitutes discrimination based on sexual orientation and infringes the right of authors and publishers to freedom of expression and thus EU law, is unfounded. Actually, this has given a higher degree of protection to children’s physical and mental health after applying the necessity and proportionality test. Action and prevention against gender lobbying is therefore not a means of exclusion but a means of protecting the fundamental right of children to proper development. The aggressive spread and dissemination of this violent ideology poses serious dangers, resulting in a significant surge in the number of adolescents seeking to change their gender in recent years.

A twenty-fold increase was recorded at a clinic in Amsterdam between 1980 and 2015, and a thirty-fold increase in England and Wales in a decade. In the case of minors, it may easily happen that they change their decision, but reversing a gender reassignment is costly, complicated, and often impossible.  Being aware of and despite all this, the EC is attacking Hungary over the Child Protection Act, and the FRA has taken over the false Brussels narrative that the law blurs paedophile offenders and LGBT people.

The second chapter, entitled “Racism, xenophobia and related tolerance”, begins with a report published in March 2021 by the European Minority Rights Group, saying that “It found systematic challenges related to the existence of discrimination, lack of knowledge of anti-discrimination legislation and lack of access to justice, including lawyers who are not known in anti-discrimination litigation”. According to the Report, the government is not making significant efforts to reach segregated and other disadvantaged communities nationwide. This statement is refuted by the public works program, which allows the most deprived strata of society to start living on wages and salaries instead of aid, thus integrating into the work-based society and the fact that the minimum wage is currently higher than the average wage in 2010. The unfounded sorry felt for the situation of minorities in Hungary and the portrayal of the knowledge of Hungarian legal society as incomplete are part of the liberal attitude that characterises Western left-wing politicians and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). It is no coincidence that the European Group on Minority Rights shares this view, as the NGO received USD 26,290 (approximately HUF 10.12 million) from the Open Society Foundations (OSF), linked to George Soros, for its internship program alone in 2018 and 2019. The FRA Report criticises that no new legal provision refers to Council Directive 2000/43/EC implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin.

The reason for the former may be that the law responds to social phenomena, and since there is no systemic racism in Hungary, such directives are not necessarily applied, or at least there is no precedent which would make it necessary to be referred to. A kind of cognitive dissonance emerges in Brussels’ communication when it attacks the Hungarian government’s anti-migration policy, but at the same time, at the level of words, it is concerned about the situation of sexual and religious minorities. Although extremist liberal political groups like to say that homosexual people are oppressed and anti-Semitism is high in Hungary, the reality is different: In Hungary, where no illegal immigrants can come, and thus no extremist Islamist groups either, LGBT society and Jewish communities can live in much greater security than in Western European countries, especially France and the United Kingdom.

Regarding access to justice and violence against women, the Report referred, inter alia, to the position of the Patent Association and the Women for Women Together Against Violence Association (NANE). According to the two organisations, domestic violence and sexual violence are serious problems in Hungary, for which legal instruments do not provide an adequate solution. They do not consider the victim protection system to be adequate, they consider the quantity and quality of police training deficient, and they think authorities have a victim-blaming attitude. An essential part of liberal political communication is the denigration of the authorities and placing women in the role of victim. Violence, wherever and to any extent present and whoever it is committed to, can never be acceptable and must be fought against, but it is not true that the Hungarian government would not do so. That is why the Victim Support Centres have been established and the Criminal Code has been tightened in several respects. There are clear interests behind the practices of these two NGOs, which negatively describe the Hungarian authorities and government measures. In 2019 and 2020, Patent received USD 119,925 (approximately HUF 46.14 million), while NANE received USD 96,325 (HUF 37.06 million) from OSF.

In addition to the European Group of Minority Rights, the Patent Association, and NANE, the FRA bases its Report on the by-no-means impartial opinions of several other (pseudo) non-governmental organisations with multiple ties to George Soros.

Such are the Amnesty International, whose Hungarian organisation alone received USD 25,000 (HUF 9.62 million) in funding from OSF in 2020, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU), which received a grant of USD 870,000 (HUF 334.77 million) from the Soros Foundation between 2016 and 2020, the Helsinki Committee, to which the OSF allocated a total of USD 1 510 million (HUF 580.96 million) in 2016, 2018 and 2019, and the Háttér Society, which openly conducts LGBT propaganda, and the Labrisz Lesbian Association, the latter of which got richer by USD 45,000 or HUF 17.31 million between 2016 and 2018, by courtesy of George Soros. The EU, and thus the FRA, intend to provide NGOs, which do not have popular legitimacy, with a greater role. As it was said on 7 December 2021 in the FRA’s webinar entitled “EU Rule of Law Mechanism – What is the Role of NGOs?”, the “dedicated contribution” of NGOs is particularly important to the Commission.

Organisations like these, mostly funded by George Soros, are ready to assist Western liberal politics and big business in spreading the ideology of open societies in Europe.