Original Financial Times article (behind paywall)
The European Union will sabotage Hungary’s economy if Budapest blocks fresh aid to Ukraine at a summit this week, under a confidential plan drawn up by Brussels, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Brussels has outlined a strategy to explicitly target Hungary’s economic weaknesses, imperil its currency and drive a collapse in investor confidence in a bid to hurt “jobs and growth” if Budapest refuses to lift its veto on the aid to Kyiv, the newspaper reported, citing a document drawn up by EU officials.
Notorious for many bitter feuds with the EU during his 13 years in power, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has become a vocal critic of the bloc’s support for Ukraine and boasted about his ties with the Kremlin since Russia went to war in Ukraine in February 2022.
The document seen by FT declares that “in the case of no agreement in the February 1 [summit], other heads of state and government would publicly declare that in the light of the unconstructive behaviour of the Hungarian PM . . . they cannot imagine that” EU funds would be provided to Budapest.
Ah! Secret EU plan against Orban! Well FT, if you don‘t produce more of this document, and any kind of proof that this is more than a research paper, I call BS. There is so little in this article supporting the monstrous claim that the EU is secretly planning to devalue Hungary‘s currency, that I get the feeling that this is the expression of an anti EU agenda by the FT itself. There you go, that‘s my monstrous assumption.
I still think it would be cleaner if they used the official mechanism for this, ie. stripping then of voting rights, rather than resorting to extra-legal tactics like these which is essentially just blackmail.
They should use everything. The time for appeasing this wannabe dictator is long over.
I wonder if he’s being treated with kid gloves because he gives an excuse for not aiding Ukraine. “We wanted to, but it’s that damn Orbán”
Not unthinkable, but I doubt it. It was the same before Ukraine. The issues is that consensus is the basis of the EU. To degree that makes sense - otherwise states wouldn’t be willing to surrender their power to a central govenrment - but it’s been overdone quite a bit. We can’t afford to ignore minorities that account for 30 to 49% of the population, but we also can’t afford not to ignore the 10% that isn’t willing to cooperate.
I figure you’re right, it really doesn’t seem all that likely but it was just a thought that popped into my head.
But yeah, it’s interesting to see what this current “turbulence” will lead to. Requiring consensus only has a chance to work if everyone is acting in good faith, so when a member state is well on its way to becoming essentially a dictatorship with aims that are directly at odds with the EU’s goals, there’s simply no way consensus will work.
It’s interesting that the EU really doesn’t have too many good mechanisms to do anything about bad-faith actors in the first place. Eg. using Hungary’s funding as a lever has been tried, but because of the consensus requirement, Orbán can essentially hold decisions hostage until he gets what he wants.
Too many systems have been built with the implicit assumption that all participating actors are acting in good faith, and a single bad-faith actor can actually cause remarkable amounts of trouble because there’s no mechanisms for stopping them
They can’t. Hungary was protected by Poland and now will be by Slovakia. The EU Commission can theoretically act independently but in practice, this is political. And the EU Council can only take official action if Hungary has no friends at all.
And the EU Council can only take official action if Hungary has no friends at all.
On the other hand, EU Council would not take action if Hungary has even only one enemy.
Yeah, that’s the price they pay for not acting while the disease hadn’t spread yet
extra-legal tactics like these which is essentially just blackmail
Politics?
Based
Intra-EU trade war? That wasn’t on my Bingo card for this year
I am very skeptical about this.
Secret plans by the EU to hurt one of its own member countries? And the proof is a document seen by FT?
And rather than sanction Orban and his accomplices, or making it harder for his country to work against the EU, the plan supposedly is to harm from the bottom up? And in secret, even though decisions/resolutions are made by an open parliament of countries?
To me, this report sounds a little bit too much like those Russian “news” that you’d find on Sputnik & co. Perhaps even like preparation for another Brexit scenario where they fan resentment through misinformation and social media seeding (remember these terms? “red tape,” “Brussel bureaucrats,” “autonomy,” “it’s unreformable,” …).
This all seems so implausible.
They can’t cut funding but they can enact all that?
strategy to explicitly target Hungary’s economic weaknesses, imperil its currency and drive a collapse in investor confidence in a bid to hurt “jobs and growth”
How? Supposedly there is a document outlining all this, then why not mention how this is supposed to work?
And how are these plans supposed to compel Hungary to do something if they are secret?It may be me, but this all doesn’t sound like a stable relationship. Plus, it will give other EU members (especially where the growing ultra right wing anti-EU parties are reigning) more reason for their own Brexit-like plans.
You have to draw the line somewhere. Enough is enough. They’ve been nothing but cooperative until now and all the goodwill has been taken advantage of and painted as weakness. It’s about damn time they switched from passive to active pushback.
And it’s not going to provide anti-EU people with anything they haven’t dreamed up themselves long ago. Have you listened to anti-EU propaganda? It’s mostly demented, wild conspiracies.
The EU is an association of like-minded societies. If Hungary doesn’t feel like it belongs anymore they can start considering withdrawing.
Which countries are that though?
Poland has a pro EU government now, albeit society remains split. Still if they wouldn’t align with the EU, they would have to align with Russia. They are fiercly against that.
Slovakia and Hungary are in the same boat. Orban doesn’t really want to leave the EU. He knows that aligning with Russia would kill the countries economy and he either gets to rule over rubble or the people will kill him.
They instead want to play the EU and Russia by playing both sides for as much opportunistic gain as possible. By not playing, the EU calls the bluff.
Poland has a pro EU government now, albeit society remains split. Still if they wouldn’t align with the EU, they would have to align with Russia. They are fiercly against that.
Poles being anti-EU is something that ex-government / political right has been trying to manufacture for years without any internal success. We trust EU institutions more than our own. We might be split on some policies but majority is strongly for at least current level of integration.
They still ought to use the official mechanism rather than this which is just blackmail
This is stupid:
- Orbán doesn’t care about Hungarian economy.
- This will just help Orbán, because he can legit say now that the EU hurts Hungarians on purpose. Not him, but all Hungarians. He was telling this for years, without any proof, but now EU just did him a favor, thanks…
Whatever the EU does will help Orban. So why not try this approach? Hell Orban is already doing half the work, making sure the country’s economy goes down the shitter.
Just accept the fact that no matter what the EU does, Orban will stay popular. The brain of the average Hungarian voter is mush anyways.
The brain of the average Hungarian voter is mush anyways.
Sometimes i wonder if that is a regional culture thing in that part of Europe considering the kind of people Austria and Bavaria vote for in large numbers too.
You haven’t seen the results from the last Dutch election? If it’s regional, the region is all of Europe.
I am not talking about the last one or two election but more like the last 50-100 years.
Yay acceptable racism huh?
Racism against uhhhhh…
Ah yes! The race of central europeans. Wait…
Oh so if it’s just hurtfully stereotyping a location in the world then that’s fine then? You don’t even realise the hypocrisy here
That’s something else… We’re talking racism here.
You are literally talking semantics here. It’s basically racism against the slavic people, but you don’t see that.
Either he leaves the EU and everyone is happy, or the population fed up with the economy tanking will finally get rid of him. Either way it’s a win for the rest of the bloc. It’s just a pity for the people who didn’t vote for him and aren’t able to move
How would you deal with Orban then?
The current freezing of EU fund things are somewhat working. And he can’t use them to make himself look like a victim. He likes to speak about himself as “We Hungarians”, and this just helps him with that.
This stops working when the matters that Orban is vetoing are time-critical. Like military aid for Ukraine.
Orban is creating a situation where the EU has two bad alternatives to choose from, and he doesn’t think they’ll turn on Hungary. But they might, because at this point, most of Europe seems like they’d prefer Ukraine being in the union over Hungary. So if Orban calls the EU’s bluff, there’s a very good chance that the EU will call Orban’s bluff and kill their voting rights, with full knowledge that it would strongly push Hungary towards leaving the Union. It’s a trade off; everyone’s done the math at this point. We’ll see how it actually pans out in the coming weeks.
I’d take Ukraine instead of Hungary any day. I feel bad for the Hungarians and suspect the reason for the problem is Kremlin propaganda trying to divide the EU, but at a certain point enough is enough. They can be an example for other countries, like Brexit.
If he was already saying it then what does it matter? 😄 What’s he gonna say, “I was lying before but now they’re really doing it”? Lol.
I fear that we will look at the situation of the recent past years with a lot of nostalgia and think “we were happy but we didn’t know it”…
I get your point, but at the other hand Orban has been doing everything he can to get the EU to take an action like this ao he can use it for his narrative against them.
It’s high time that Hungarians decide if they want in the EU or not. The sooner they make that decision the better.
And yes I fully realize that the democratic process is broken in Hungary, and that any attempt to pretend this will be a democratic decision will fail, and that Hungarians will have to take to the streets eventually.
No way around it. I’m their neighbor and we’ve been through this stuff ourselves and it was hard but it’s something that needs to be done if they hope to ever regain democracy. Eternal vigilance and all that. Postponing it only makes it worse.
We will stand with them but it’s not a problem we can solve for them.
