Resumen de Hungary's attacks on human dignity: Article 2 TEU and the foundations of democracy in the European Union

Catherine Dupré

• While in Poland the October 2023 elections led to a government halting the rule of law crisis, inHungary the political situation continues to deteriorate. Focusing on European Parliament resolutions,this article analyses Hungarian developments from the prism of human dignity, the EU's first founda-tional value under Article 2 TEU. First the article discusses the key features of human dignity with refer-ence to the original commitment to human dignity under the 1948 Universal Declaration of HumanRights and to the EU Charter. Secondly, it uses these key features as an analytical grid for evidencingthe construction of a counter-model of human beings made to live in a society of inequality and exclu-sion. Finally, this paper outlines five reasons why human dignity as the first Article 2 value is breachedby the Hungarian regime and why the EU Commission's decision not to trigger Article 7(2) is soproblematic