From al-Jazeera:
European Union legislators voted overwhelmingly in favour of launching punitive action against the Hungarian government for flouting democratic rules in a stunning political blow for Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
With 448 votes in favour, 197 against and 48 abstentions, the motion passed in the plenary session on Wednesday, the first time ever the European legislature triggered an Article 7 procedure against an EU member state.
The unprecedented vote could allow Hungary's EU voting rights to be stripped.
Dutch Greens MEP Judith Sargentini, who spearheaded the vote, smiled broadly and breathed a sigh of relief before embracing her supporters in parliament in the French city of Strasbourg.
"It is a positive sign of this parliament taking responsibility and wanting action," Sargentini told a press conference afterward.
She had urged colleagues not to let Hungary off the hook, declaring that Orban's rule "violates the values on which this union was built".
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said before the vote that the commission "will resist all attacks on the rule of law" in an annual state-of-the-union speech in the European Parliament.
Juncker went on to say the commission, which proposes EU legislation and oversees implementation of decisions, "continues to be very concerned by the developments" in some EU member states and promised to employ the rule-of-law procedure against any governments that veer from the EU's democratic principles.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto wasted little time in slamming the vote as "nothing less than the petty revenge of pro-immigration politicians".
"This decision condemning Hungary and the Hungarian people was made because we Hungarians have demonstrated that migration in not a necessary process and that migration can be stopped," Szijjarto told reporters in Budapest.
Well, this is a new experience. Wooooooooooooooo ~
Oh, and before we go further, below are the texts of Articles 2 and 8 on European Union, just so you guys know why Hungary has run itself aground and why the EU parliament just had to hold this momentous vote:
Good to see the EU getting the balls and the feet to kick Orban's government right in the party jewels, for even if we go by the Hungarian foreign minister's logic, it's clear as pie that Hungary did violate Article 2 in both letter and spirit by its hostility towards migrants, as with that bloody constitutional amendment (forbidding any "alien population" from settling in what was once one-half of the Double Monarchy -- irony!) that all but captures the spirit if not (yet?) the letter of the laws condemning Jews, made so famous by that most infamous export of its former other half Austria.
Now, if I skimmed it correctly, Article 8 includes an option to expel a grossly aberrant EU member state if needed -- and if not for the rightly formidable obstacles towards that goal? The EU should move towards that direction, should Orban insist on his policies towards his own people as well as towards any migrants who chance by Hungary.
Take it from a citizen of that far lesser non-EU in southeast Asia, the one that received Myanmar with all its warts -- a good deed is punished if you let up the leash.
Anyway, enough me -- how's your turn!