EU Issues
Dail Éireann — 2020-11-26
============================================================

Barry Cowen (FF), Laois-Offaly

I acknowledge that the Minister answered a similar question earlier and went into great detail. I just want to seek his response to and comments on reports regarding the Hungarian justice minister's comments on reported plans to set up a rule of law institute, hitting back at criticisms regarding the decline in democratic norms in the Poland and Hungary. She also stated that it was "hoped to bring other countries in the region into the initiative". It is quite inflaming, to say the least, and I would like to hear the Minister's response, notwithstanding the commitments to which he alluded regarding the German Presidency's efforts to resolve this issue and bring it to a conclusion. I am also conscious that two years' of hearings have taken place concerning the issues being raised by these two countries regarding others' impressions of them.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-11-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-11-26