Speaking at a plenary session of the European Parliament that week, European Council President Charles Michel could not avoid the long-suffering Hungarian law banning gay propaganda among minors
Charles Michel said literally the following: “We in the European Union do not discriminate, we integrate. That is the meaning of Article 2 of our Treaty”.
Let’s open Article 2 of the founding document of the Union – I love working with primary sources.
We read:
“Article 2.
The Union is based on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are shared by Member States within a society characterised by pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men”.
Something tells me that the architects of a united post-war Europe, Jean Monnet and Konrad Adenauer, did not dream that their ideas about equality and dignity would be interpreted so sexually by the EU leadership in the 21st century, adjusting the founding principles of European unity to gender.
For more than 20 years “non-citizens” in Estonia and Latvia have been in line for “integration” under Article 2. Tell them how the EU does not discriminate but integrates, and whether their situation is in the spirit and the letter of Article 2.
Migrants and refugees are very familiar with the basics of non-discriminatory integration after the EU’s democratic interventions in their sovereign states.
The Russian-speaking media in Lithuania, RT and Sputnik in France, RT DE in Germany are familiar with the integration and non-discrimination reality of the EU.
The youth protesting against lockdown in the Netherlands, the political wing of the Yellow Vests in France, the Belarusian minority in Poland, the activists for the preservation of historical memory in Poland are familiar with the primacy of equality and respect for dignity by their own experience.
They have all been in line for freedom fodder for a long time. Hungary can wait.
Maria Zakharova