BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES
Weekly analysis with Sam Morgan
European leaders meet next week to try and hammer out an agreement on providing Ukraine with billions of euros in aid. No prizes for guessing which mischief-making-magyar premier stands in the way.
This special edition of the European Council summit has been brewing for a while. Leaders were unable to broker a deal in December, so they deferred this big decision on €50 billion for Ukraine until 1 February.
But little has changed since that pre-Christmas meeting. Maybe bellies have got a little fatter thanks to turkey dinners but Orban’s objections remain the same.
So what will the other 26 EU countries do? Ask Orban to leave the room again so they can vote? Hardly likely. Frustration has started to breed contempt and that is providing fertile ground for diplomats to start plotting their own schemes to deal with Hungary.
BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES includes weekly analysis not found anywhere else, as Sam Morgan helps you make sense of what is happening in Brussels. If you want to receive Brussels Behind the Scenes straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the newsletter here.
At the December summit, Council-watchers thought they had witnessed a new way of doing business in Brussels. Viktor Orban was asked to leave the room so that the other 26 leaders could vote on an issue that he had threatened to veto.
That issue was opening membership talks with Ukraine and it passed unanimously while Hungary’s leader was getting a coffee or pushing through some legislation in the gents’ facilities.
It is unlikely to be repeated. That card has been played and was of no use when leaders wanted to allocate €50bn from the EU budget to send to Ukraine so that the besieged nation stands some chance of fending off Russia’s illegal invasion.
Next week’s summit could fail to achieve its main aim because little has changed. Orban still wants the billions of euros from the recovery fund that the Commission has frozen because of rule of law concerns and he is not afraid to take the whole EU hostage to get it.
The Commission flexed and agreed to disperse some of the cash just before the December summit, angering members of the European Parliament, who insist that Hungary has not fulfilled the ‘super milestones’ needed to get that money.
Behind the Scenes spoke to a couple of diplomats who are now not particularly interested in what Orban “actually wants”. There is a general feeling that he has overstepped the line by a country mile and is no longer fairly fighting for his country’s national interests.
How do you solve a problem like Viktor?
The non-starter idea of triggering Article 7 of the EU treaty has yet again enjoyed a renewal of interest. This would allow the Council to vote on suspending the voting rights of another country, thereby negating Orban’s veto-wielding power.
Article 7 procedures have been in the works for years, against both Hungary and Poland, over separate but equally serious rule of law breaches. But the idea has gone nowhere and is not likely to anytime soon.
The vote must be unanimous. In the past, that has meant Hungary and Poland vetoing each other’s procedure. Interest is now renewed because Poland has a new government and ex-Council boss Donald Tusk is seen as a powerful pro-Brussels ally.
However, Slovakia also has a new prime minister. Robert Fico is a staunch Orban supporter and was in Budapest earlier this week for tea and goulash with his old comrade.
It is true that Fico was also in Ukraine this week, where he reportedly got on well with Ukraine’s government leaders and agreed not to block any aid destined for the embattled nation. That is progress but has nothing to do with the Article 7 proposal.
There is hardly unanimity about using this vote-stripper against Hungary because there is always a worrying feeling of “what if I’m next?”. No member of the EU is completely clean and none want to set a precedent.
Even with Orban playing silly games over Sweden’s NATO membership. Withdrawing his vote is not going to happen. Especially if there is a sense that an EU country will be punished because it is not helping Ukraine’s defence effort.
As an aside, it is hardly helpful when EU luminaries such as MEP Guy Verhofstadt tweet that the Parliament is “ready to go to Court and abolish Hungarian voting rights”.
You do not have to be Malcolm Tucker or Kasper Juul to spin that into potent anti-EU fuel that paints the Union as a power-hungry dictatorship. We are in an election year and some politicians simply do not help themselves at all.
So what are the other options? The Hungary economy is not as mighty as Orban's outriders claim. If there is political bandwidth to get creative and squeeze his government by targeting its financing, it will hurt.
The Commission could also turn the cash tap off again. That initial tranche of funding has not been piled into black suitcases and delivered yet. Plus there is about €20bn still on the table.
The whole point of agreeing to release it in the first place was so that Orban would stop irritating Union policy. That has not happened so the Commission surely does not have to hold up its side of the bargain.
Unless Ursula von der Leyen engineered it so that she could keep Orban on side for when there needs to be a decision made on who should lead the Commission for the next five years, of course.
Perish the thought. But it it is helpful to remember that Viktor Orban is not the only person in the EU playing the game and, most importantly, playing to win.
One silver lining: Hungary's PM will not be in charge of the Council anytime soon, after Charles Michel withdrew his intention to run as an MEP in June's election, which would have caused a potential headache about who would fill his seat as president.
BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES includes weekly analysis not found anywhere else, as Sam Morgan helps you make sense of what is happening in Brussels. If you want to receive Brussels Behind the Scenes straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the newsletter here.
