Hungary, with the great provocateur Viktor Orbán at the helm, has assumed the presidency of the Council of the European Union in its own style: challenging the community club. The national-populist and Eurosceptic politician, the most unruly student of the EU, wants to “leave his mark” during the semester in which he will act as a mediator between the member states to advance norms and regulations. And in his first week he has started with a trip to kyiv, where he has asked for a ceasefire in Ukraine, the country invaded and attacked by Russia, and a visit to Moscow, where he has met with Vladimir Putin to talk about “peace” and listen without blinking to the Kremlin’s conditions, which involve Ukraine’s surrender.
Although his influence in the EU is limited, the meeting in Russia, which has caused a storm of rejection from the other European leaders, has exposed a rift in the community club. And, above all, it has given ammunition to the Russian autocrat.
The Hungarian leader knows and recognises that he has no European mandate to negotiate anything – and Putin also has an outstanding arrest warrant from the International Court of Justice in The Hague for the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, as the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, has recalled. But he will take advantage of the visibility of the presidency to stir up trouble and to gain all possible benefits at home, where he has been governing for 14 years. The slogan of his semester, a nod to the slogan of the Republican populist Donald Trump, already foreshadowed controversy: “Let’s make Europe great again” (“Mega: Make Europe Great Again” instead of “Maga: Make America great again”).
“Orbán will use the presidency politically, with an agenda to push,” says Zoltán Kovács, the Hungarian government’s international spokesman and the man the prime minister has put in charge of the logistics of the European presidency. Orbán’s trip to Moscow has raised concerns among Hungary’s growing critics. There are deep doubts that he can be an “honest broker” between member states.
“Being an honest mediator does not mean that we have to abandon our position,” Kovács told a group of European correspondents in Budapest, on a trip organised by the Hungarian government to which EL PAÍS has been invited. Unlike other traditional visits by European presidencies, there is no meeting with the head of the executive in Hungary. “He has an agenda that is impossible to fit in,” says the international spokesman. The day after, Orbán landed in Moscow to meet with Putin, with whom he has maintained good relations after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Hungary is currently the only country in the Union with a serious infringement procedure opened for its authoritarian drift that could cost it, for example, the withdrawal of its voting rights within the EU; a red button, however, that its partners have refused to ever use. The European Commission has frozen 21 billion euros in European funds for its violations of the rule of law. A sanction that Kovács and other ministers describe as a “political weapon” against governments that “do not follow the monolithic political narrative of the EU institutions.”
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The Hungarian government’s progress in its measures against LGBT people, in the control of the media and civil organisations, and the loose-lipped nature of Orbán, who has acquired a taste for “blackmailing” partners to obtain European and national benefits, summarises a high-ranking EU source, are causing concern in the EU institutions and in many capitals about how he will use the six months of the rotating presidency of the EU Council.
In fact, recalls Perle Petit, an analyst at the European Policy Centre (EPC), the European Parliament demanded in a non-binding resolution at the end of May that the Budapest round, which began on 1 July, be skipped and that the next round be taken over by Belgium, from which it has taken over, Poland.
“The most important moment of the Hungarian presidency was June, the last month of the Belgian presidency,” says a veteran European diplomat. Spain (last half of 2023) and Belgium have accelerated and have pushed through many issues. And it has been taken into account that the six months in Hungary can be a pause for sanctions against Russia, for example, the diplomat adds.
European Agenda
In the last weeks of June, for example, new sanctions were approved against people and entities linked to the Kremlin and its war effort against Ukraine, and against Belarus, for helping the Russian war machine (Hungary has tried to torpedo and delay the 14 approved packages, which it has ended up supporting). However, at the end of this legislative period, which will coincide with the formation of a new European Commission – which is the one that proposes legislation – few issues remain on the table. Hungary, however, like the other presidencies, will set the agenda of the issues.
Hungary has put “peace” first on its list of priorities to be promoted during its six-month presidency, says European Affairs Minister Janos Boká, who describes Orbán as a “facilitator.” In Moscow, shoulder to shoulder with Putin, the Hungarian leader said on Friday that his goal is to find “the shortest path” to peace. Although Budapest – which refuses to send weapons to kyiv and has blocked more than 6 billion euros from the European fund used to reimburse deliveries of military equipment by other partners – has not put any ideas on the table.
Orbán’s message resonates with the majority of Hungarian citizens. “The war must end as soon as possible. It is not sustainable. It is causing enormous economic damage to Europe, which is only increasing the drain with its military support for Ukraine,” says István, who is strolling with his wife, Katalin, and their three children along one of the promenades along the Danube. This is also the constant argument in the Hungarian public media. Not far away, a huge advertising poster with the face of a soldier calls for volunteers for the armed and territorial forces. The summer recruitment campaign is underway in Hungary, which, like many other member states, is rearming. The undercurrent is Russia’s war against Ukraine, with which it shares a border, but the Russian threat is never mentioned as a reason.
Immediately after peace, Hungary has placed the fight against irregular migration, which it considers an “existential threat”, as a priority on its agenda, says Minister Boká. Hungary will use the presidency as a platform to promote “innovative solutions” to reduce arrivals to the EU and to make it as secure as possible, he adds.
The focus of the Hungarian semester is also on European competitiveness and demographics. Orbán, an ultra-conservative defender of what is considered the traditional family and who heads a government without a single female minister, is a well-known pro-natalist who has also embraced theories similar to the conspiracy theory of the great replacement, which claims that there is a plot to replace white, Christian Europeans with non-Christian immigrants.
A vision that he shares with many of his new siblings The Orbán-led Patriots for Europe party, which, together with far-right parties such as Vox and the Dutch party of Geert Wilders (and which is courting the National Rally of France’s Marine Le Pen and Italy’s La Lega), aims to establish itself as a political group in the European Parliament and even become the third largest group in terms of MEPs, is aspiring to become. “Instead of Patriots for Europe, they should be called Patriots for Russia,” says a diplomat from an Eastern European country. She adds: “Orbán has given us all the finger and will continue to do so throughout the semester.”
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