- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmit.online
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.
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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.
Yeah, that’s the price they pay for not acting while the disease hadn’t spread yet
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.
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?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…
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.
