Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the European Council.YVES HERMAN (Portal)
The next time Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán meets his ally Vladimir Putin, he will be able to offer him a pretext. Also to the citizens to whom he shouts against Ukraine and against the “Brussels bureaucrats”. He never explicitly supported the European Union's opening of negotiations with Ukraine, the country targeted by the Russian autocrat's decision. When the remaining community leaders did this on Thursday afternoon, the ultra-conservative left the room, approved the political commitment due to the administrative silence and preferred to announce his rejection later on social networks: “This is completely senseless, irrational and wrong decision.” . In vain, because by not expressing his opposition where it really counts, namely in the European Council, he has supported the decision of others. The story of how negotiations for Kiev's admission to the community club were started is told in European handbooks will be remembered as unusual and unprecedented. The formula includes the typical Brussels habit of looking for solutions to everything, the advance of a German head of state and the proposal to drink coffee at a tense and crucial summit for the unity of Europe.
Orbán has been the grumpy man at European summits for years, threatening to veto measures that require the unanimity of all member states. In the end, he rarely does. But when he sent a letter to European Council President Charles Michel weeks ago calling for a comprehensive review of the common strategy with Ukraine, he toughened the tone and many believed he was serious. And on this occasion, nothing less was on the table: starting negotiations with Kiev on its entry into the community club, a decision full of political symbolism that deepens Ukraine's integration into the Western bloc, something that Moscow hates and sees as an attack.
Faced with this possibility, key community institutions and capitals mobilized to dismantle Budapest's new blackmail and transform it into another bravery from someone who, according to the European Parliament, has turned Hungary into a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.” Michel traveled to the Hungarian capital. Orbán went to dinner in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron. The head of the Spanish executive, Pedro Sánchez, called him … And that same Thursday, coordinated by the President of the Council, the leaders of the big four of the community club, Macron, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, plus Michel and the President of the European Commission , Ursula von der Leyen, met with him while the rest waited for a solution.
At some point in all of these conversations, the solution was found: Orbán would leave the room when the time came to agree to the part of the European Council conclusions supporting the opening of accession negotiations with Ukraine. The choreography was suggested by the German chancellor, who, when the time came, told the Hungarian that perhaps it was time to have a coffee, according to several community sources. After the previous volleys, it was said in the diplomatic huddle at the summit that they were missing the German Angela Merkel, who was able to look Orbán in the eyes and get him on the common path. Scholz, who neither likes to accept nor prepare surprises and who has been accused by some of a certain lack of rudder in his European strategy while focusing on domestic politics with a complicated governing coalition, was responsible for completing an unprecedented strategy. “It was something that was agreed upon and implemented constructively,” multiple sources noted Thursday evening.
Without confirming whether the idea was his own or the result of an agreement during the numerous meetings of the last few days – he only admitted that he had “tested a little” the idea before presenting it in the plenary session with the other states – and heads of government – , Scholz He explained at a press conference that after all the discussions and when he saw his colleagues arguing in a closed room, he decided to bring the new formula onto the market. “I think it was the right time to bring it up. We had many bilateral discussions and then a comprehensive discussion with all the heads of state and government, and I felt that it was time to ask whether a decision was possible in this way. and the answer was yes,” he said.
In any case, “it wasn’t a trick,” emphasized the German. “I suggested to the Hungarian Prime Minister that we be allowed to make the decision in his absence and the proposal was examined. I asked him to think about it for a moment and not answer immediately and spontaneously. He replied that he would use the suggestion. And then we made the decision when there were 26 players in the room.”
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Scholz defended that he had acted “in accordance with the rules”. But he also acknowledged that the formula is not “something that can be implemented every time” and that the ideal is to strive for an agreement like the one they are trying to do now with the review of the multi-year budget, which includes an important economic lifeline in Ukraine . “Consensus doesn’t fall from heaven like the Holy Spirit, you have to work at it and the solution can’t always be for someone to walk out the door,” he ironized. This is a resource “just for special moments,” he said.
It's the first time something like this has happened. Since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, a head of state or government has never failed to establish his position, directly or by delegation, to a colleague from another country when the latter will not be present (the Spanish tend to trust the Portuguese ). ). . However, there are no legal doubts that the step taken is valid. The Treaties state that the Council adopts its conclusions by consensus, but in this sense absence counts as support since rejection must be explicit.
In other cases, other formulas have been sought to circumvent vetoes, for example by inserting a footnote clearly expressing a country's disagreement, or by instructing the President of the European Council to adopt the conclusions in which all except one agree. This time it was not possible and although there is no doubt about the legal validity of what was done, there are also legal sources that emphasize that “the opening of accession negotiations is a decision of an eminently political nature”. This is intended to convey that there is no legal obligation for heads of state or government to support the formal start of negotiations, but rather that it is an EU practice.
“For Orbán, it was a pantomime to save face,” said Ignacio Molina, senior researcher at the EU-focused Elcano Royal Institute. He points to a similar situation in the 1960s, when the then French president, General Charles de Gaulle, forced his ministers to vacate the French seat on the Council of the EU (the European Council was then an informal council). committee) because it did not agree with a decision on agricultural policy. This decision paralyzed the European project, he remembers, because the other partners understood that without the French everything would be delegitimized. Although Molina highlights the difference in a few words: “The EU with six is not the same as with 27. France is not Hungary.” And De Gaulle is not Orbán.”
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