SD said no to EU criticism of Hungary and Poland

Published 13 April 2024 at 16.12

EU. TheSD has voted against all resolutions criticizing the lack of rule of law in Hungary and Poland, during the time when both countries had conservative governments. This shows a mapping done by Europaportalen.

Share the article

TwittraShare

SD's members have also voted against the annual reports that the commission produces on the state of the principles of the rule of law in all member states, according to Europaportalen.

Poland is today a liberally governed country, but was governed for most of the mandate period by Law and Justice, which is a conservative party that sits in the same party group as SD.

Four of the Sweden Democrats' five yes votes in the area relate to reports dealing with the state of the rule of law in Malta, where the local S government had the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia murdered when she threatened to expose the government's extensive corruption.

The designated ringleader in the mess, the S government's former chief of staff Keith Schembri, has still not been charged. The local oligarch Yorgen Fenech – a sort of Maltese counterpart to Jacob Wallenberg – is, however, suspected of instigating the murder but after seven years has still not been prosecuted.

SD members Charlie Weimers and Johan Nissinen state in a written comment to the Europaportalen that “the resolutions about Malta presented sane, concrete and constructive criticism” and that this was the reason why the SD stood behind them.

What the criticism of Hungary and Poland's right-wing governments amounts to in concrete terms is more unclear, and the SD members also explain their decision to refrain from them by saying that the resolutions “against Hungary and Poland were more politicized and unvarnished”.

“If the resolutions on Hungary and Poland were designed like those on Malta, we possibly voted for them,” the duo writes in an email to Europaportalen.