Analyse this: On 6 June, we will vote in the European elections. And on 1 July, Hungary will take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, giving a big role to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán just when the top EU jobs for the next five years will be decided.
Strange as it may seem, for the time being, Orbán seems to be trying to convey that the EU is not a priority for him and that his loyalties are elsewhere.
He skipped an EU summit on Monday because he had better things to do: He attended the Belt and Road summit in China, where he had separate meetings with Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was the only one among EU leaders to publicly react, calling Orbán’s handshake with Putin, a man wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, “very, very unpleasant”.
“How can you shake a criminal’s hand who has waged a war of aggression, especially coming from a country that has a history like Hungary has?” she wondered.
As a journalist, I have also wondered why Orbán behaves as counter-current to the rest of the EU in such a steady and unwavering way.
And I had a chance to ask him a question during the 2015 migration crisis and received an answer that enlightened me: Orbán believes that he is right and the rest of the EU is either blind or prey to conformism, but they will start thinking like him sooner or later.
“When we criticise the EU, it’s because we want to correct these mistakes, and we want to reform the European Union,” he told the European Parliament in 2017.
Indeed, Orbán has tried to invest in EU enlargement to build a coalition of like-minded illiberal countries, but these plans didn’t materialise as EU enlargement is not moving forward.
Time flies, it feels like it was only yesterday when Orbán, first elected as prime minister in 2010, revealed Hungary’s priorities for its first presidency of the Council of the EU in the first half of 2011. EU enlargement was a priority back then but is unlikely to have the same prominence this time.
Another priority was “to make Hungarians feel Hungarian”, a phrase that refers to Hungarian minorities left in other countries following the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which ended the Kingdom of Hungary after WWI and is still today seen by many in Hungary as a “wound that never healed”.
An estimated 1.5 million ethnic Hungarians still live in Romania, and roughly another million ethnic Hungarians are spread across Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia and other former Yugoslav republics, and Ukraine.
Hungary is seen as the key potential opponent to a decision due in December on whether to open EU accession talks with Ukraine, which would require the unanimous backing of the bloc’s 27 members.
Today’s Budapest blames Kyiv for what it says is the restriction on the use of the Hungarian language by a 150,000-strong Hungarian community there.
In addition, Hungary is likely to use its veto right whenever the NATO accession of Ukraine is put on the table.
The European Parliament has already expressed doubts as to “how Hungary will be able to credibly fulfil” the task of steering the Council presidency. A resolution warning of the deteriorating rule of law and fundamental rights in Hungary was passed last May, with 442 in favour and 144 against.
Changes in the previously agreed order of Council presidencies have not been uncommon. They occurred on six occasions, and the last one was the skipping of the UK presidency, due to start in July 2017, as Brexit had already been decided.
An analysis by the European Policy Centre (EPC) says that technically, postponing a presidency is a possible legal option.
However, EPC expects no real political will from the rest of the EU members to strip Hungary of its presidency.
Therefore, one possible solution is to make all efforts to remove the ‘fangs’ of the Hungarian presidency, for instance, by not allowing them to preside over any meetings related to the rule of law and EU values.
A presidency is legally required to act as an ‘honest broker’, which in the case of Hungary, as we have seen with the example of Ukraine, goes beyond the rule of law issues.
As the European elections are approaching, the issue of the Hungarian presidency will hopefully mobilise political forces – and voters – across Europe.
For my part, I have decided: I will not cast a vote if, three weeks later, Orbán becomes the leader of our Union. I hope a solution will be found before that.
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The Roundup
Both Germany and France claimed victory after an agreement was reached among EU countries on Tuesday to reform the EU’s electricity market. Euractiv looks at what Paris and Berlin got out of the deal.
The Latvian government committed on Wednesday to help Ukraine restore and develop its telecom infrastructures, support it in meeting the EU telecom acquis, and help it to participate in EU and international programmes.
ENISA, the EU cybersecurity agency, has warned that powerful new AI models might become a disruptive factor in the EU elections next June as malicious actors could use them to run large-scale information manipulation campaigns.
The European Commission is planning to table a European Wind Power Package on Tuesday, aiming to strengthen the EU’s wind industry by solving the challenges it is facing, according to leaked drafts seen by Euractiv.
The Irish government has confirmed it will set up a working group to ensure the sustainability of biofuels used in the country, as concerns grow that tainted fuels are entering the EU market.
Despite the transition to climate neutrality creating frictions in the short-term, politicians should not change course, investors in green technologies said, asking for clear signals that the transition will be followed through.
The European Parliament formally approved the agreements on digitalisation of visas in the Schengen area on Wednesday, the penultimate step to the file becoming a legislative act.
Ukraine is desperately short of judges, and is kick-starting a long-delayed nationwide hiring spree to fill more than 2,000 vacancies and vet around as many sitting judges for potential malfeasance.
EU countries recruiting foreign healthcare staff to address shortages, rather than investing in domestic workforce development, may weaken the EU’s international health cooperation efforts, an EU Commission official warned.
Look out for…
- Informal meeting of trade ministers in Valencia Thursday-Friday.
- Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius visits Ukraine Thursday-Friday.
- Justice and Home Affairs Council in Luxembourg Thursday-Friday.
- Commission President Ursula von der Leyen participates in the EU-US Summit in Washington Friday.
Views are the author’s
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]
Source: euractiv.com
