Hungary's course in relation to homosexuality and transsexuality has been harshly criticized by other EU countries.
Union parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus doubts Hungary's EU membership.
Brussels / Berlin - After the debate with Hungary over a controversial law restricting information about homosexual and transsexuality, the Union is questioning the country's continued EU membership in the Bundestag.
"The course of Hungary as a whole is a problem," says parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus "Focus Online". He is very worried if Hungary abandons the EU's common consensus on values. "Hungary basically has to decide whether it wants to remain part of the European community of values," he says. "There can be no cherry-picking, that is, wanting to enjoy all the advantages as an EU member without not sharing a basic canon of common convictions with everyone else at the same time."
Before that, at the EU summit at the end of the week, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) said that she saw Hungary's ideas about the future of the EU as a “serious problem”. There are very profoundly different ideas about this. The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte emphasized on the sidelines of the summit that he sees no more place for Hungary in the EU if the government in Budapest continues like this. “For me, they have no business to be in the European Union,” said Rutte.
The AfD parliamentary group chairman in the Bundestag, Alexander Gauland, called Rutte's statements on Sunday “completely unacceptable” and a disproportionate interference in the internal affairs of Hungary. "It is none of the Dutch prime minister's business how the government in Budapest, elected by the Hungarian people, rules the country," Gauland explains in Berlin. If the EU tries to determine the internal constitution of its members and to sanction alleged deviants, it is embarking on the fateful path to a unitary state, warns the AfD parliamentary group leader.
The Hungarian law restricting information on homosexual and transsexuality split the EU at the Brussels summit.
In the debate, according to diplomats, individual heads of state and government even questioned whether Hungary could still have a place in the EU if the current policy was to continue.
Only Poland and Slovenia had signaled clear support for Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The Hungarian law came into force on Thursday night - and Orban says he does not want to withdraw it.
It prohibits publications that are accessible to children and that depict non-heterosexual relationships.
It also bans advertising in which homosexuals or transsexuals appear as part of social normality.
dpa
