Today in Brussels, the so-called Coreper II grouping of the European Union met to discuss what measures might be taken against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the rotating president of the Council of European Union, who has enraged most European oligarchs for daring to engage in peace diplomacy with the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and China. RT cited a July 8 Politico article quoting an unnamed EU diplomat who warned that a “meeting with Putin will permanently overshadow the Hungarian [EU] presidency…. With such a meeting, the presidency ends before it has really begun.” (Ironically, Orbán’s first peace meeting was on July 2, one day after becoming President of the EU Consilium, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.)
Coreper is not a decision-making body. Its members are the ambassadors of member countries to the EU and any action it decides on would have to be approved by the European Council. Nonetheless, the ambassadors are determined to punish Orbán for having the audacity to engage in peace discussions (not negotiations) with Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping with no mandate to engage in such foreign policy discussions according to EU “rules.” Orbán has obviously gone “rogue,” Politico argued.