It didn’t take long for Britain’s Chatham House/RIIA stink tank to outline the battle plan against the peace mission of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, ten days into Hungary’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union (Consilium), where the national ministers meet to negotiate and adopt the budget and the laws. A Chatham House posting, “Orbán Is Using Hungary’s EU Council Presidency To Bulldoze EU Norms,”, by Armida van Rij, Senior Research Fellow, Europe Program, digs in for their counterattack on Orbán. Her article maintains:
Good behavior for Orbán would have been “to drive the legislative agenda by chairing Council meetings” and to “ensure continuation of the EU policy agenda.” But on his peace trips, “Orbán has tried to create confusion by displaying EU flags in Kyiv and using the Hungarian presidency logo on promotional material for his trip to China,” she maintains for the non-EU member empire.
“Travelling to Russia to meet the head of a government under EU sanctions, which has disregarded the territorial integrity of another state, is unprecedented.… Perhaps more importantly, enabling confusion over whether he represents Hungary or also the EU on his trips is potentially breaching EU law.”
Further, “Orbán is cultivating allies including [Prime Minister] Robert Fico in Slovakia,” (which happens to not only neighbor Hungary, but which, along with Hungary, borders Ukraine) and Poland’s former Premier Mateusz Morawiecki. “Orbán’s new political faction in the European Parliament has also been joined by Czech, French, Spanish and Dutch nationalists and far-right parties.… He is no longer as isolated within Europe and beyond as he once was, which makes the challenge all the greater.”
