New EU divisions following old lines
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY— It was a continentwide party to mark the end of history.
On a spring night in 2004, a chorus sang in a Warsaw square. Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” — the anthem of the European Union — echoed across once-bloody frontiers. Midnight fireworks sparkled along the Mediterranean. The next morning, organizers set a whitetablecloth breakfast on Budapest’s Chain Bridge for revellers still celebrating the dawn of a new era for Europe.
“The divisions of the Cold War are gone — once and for all,” declared then-European Commission President Romano Prodi as he welcomed 10 new members to the EU, eight from the former communist east.
And yet, 14 years later, new divisions are emerging — many of them following old lines. The triumph of liberal democracy is being attacked from within by EU members that openly deride the club’s values, principles and rules.
But the bloc has been incapable of fighting back, its weakness a side effect of the optimism with which it grew.
Ground Zero for the rebellion is here in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban is running for re-election with boasts of his illiberalism, swipes at the hostile EU “empire” and promises to further tighten his grip on a country dancing ever-closer to the edge of autocracy.
Orban’s defiance presents the EU with a far different threat than the one it faced in 2016 when the U.K. voted to exit and speculation swirled over who might go next. It may be more serious than that — a challenge that endangers the character of the union.
“Orban doesn’t want to leave the EU,” a senior German official said. “He really wants to change the EU.”
By some measures, he’s succeeding. Far from being a pariah, Orban has found imitators in Poland and admirers in the Czech Republic, Austria and even at top political levels in Germany.
Orban’s European opponents, meanwhile, have proved unable to curb his behaviour. Rather than punish Hungary for its intransigence, Brussels continues to supply the government with billions of euros in EU subsidies — money that Orban’s domestic critics say is vital to his survival because it boosts the economy and puts cash in the pockets of favoured cronies.
“Orban is waging his freedom fight against the EU with huge amounts of EU money,” said Peter Kreko, executive director of the Budapest-based policy research firm Political Capital.
The EU never gave itself adequate tools for dealing with a wayward leader such as Orban because it never imagined needing them, even as the alliance spread far beyond its original Western European core.
At the start of the millennium, the bloc had just 15 members — none of them east of the old Iron Curtain. But after the fall of communism, Eastern European countries that had been in the orbit of the Soviet Union looked to the EU and NATO as institutions that could bind them to the West and keep them out of Moscow’s grasp.
Prosperous western neighbours spotted an opportunity to spread their influence across the continent.
Everyone assumed that, with time, differences would recede as the new members grew to adopt the values, rules and institutions of the old ones.
“We wanted to believe it. History would go on and we would be on the right side of it,” said the German official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the record. “We never imagined that history could go the other way.”
For Hungarians, too, there were expectations that, in retrospect, look naively optimistic.
“It was a fantastic constellation. We wanted it. The West wanted it. It was back wind in every respect,” said Peter Balazs, a former Hungarian diplomat who was deeply engaged in the EU accession process.
“And the followup was in the fairy tales: They live happily ever after.”
Balazs, who would go on to become the country’s foreign minister, said Hungary spent a decade proving to the EU that it was worthy of membership, working assiduously to meet the club’s strict rules for entry.
But once Hungary had joined, the union’s best leverage to keep the country on a free and democratic path evaporated. Meanwhile, no one had seriously planned for what would happen after Hungary and others joined the bloc — a failure that Balazs attributed to parallel illusions.
“A Hungarian illusion that the EU would do it, that somebody else would solve our problems,” he said. “And for Europe, the illusion that they would be like us.”
The result was fertile ground for Orban. Since coming to power in 2010, he has simultaneously used the bloc as rhetorical foil and cash spigot — all without fear of meaningful consequences.
“I have, in fact, more respect for the decency of Euroskeptics who at least say, ‘Well, I don’t like the European Union, and I don’t like the values, and I’ll go out,’ ” Guy Verhofstadt, who was prime minister of Belgium when Hungary joined the EU, told Orban last year when the Hungarian leader came to speak at the European Parliament.
“You want to continue the money of European funds, the money of the European Union, but not the European values.”
Verhofstadt, who is now the leader of a centrist bloc of the European Parliament, has condemned fellow EU leaders for refusing to hit Hungary with sanctions.
Orban openly brags of his aim to build “an illiberal state based on national foundations” and cites Russia and China as exemplary models.
He has consolidated his party’s influence over formerly independent arms of the Hungarian state and society, including prosecutors’ offices, government auditors and the media. If he wins reelection, as is widely expected, the 54-yearold Orban has promised to press ahead with legislation that would allow the banning of aid groups that work on behalf of refugees or other immigrants.
On the campaign trail, he delights crowds by lashing out at Brussels, part of a trinity of enemies that also includes Muslim refugees and the Hungarian-American investor George Soros.
As recently as 2011, Hungary scored the highest rating possible from Freedom House, an international non-governmental organization, but it is now the least free of all EU members.
The corruption monitor Transparency International ranks it the second most corrupt country in the bloc, just behind Bulgaria.
Yet Hungary is also among the greatest net beneficiaries of EU funds, receiving 4.5 billion euros (or $5.5 billion U.S.) in 2016 — equivalent to 4 per cent of the country’s economic output — while contributing less than 1 billion euros, or $1.23 billion.
The money has helped to buoy the Hungarian economy, which has been growing at a healthy clip. It has also found its way into the pockets of friends, allies and family members of the prime minister.
The mayor of Orban’s home village, a gas-fitter by trade, has become one of Hungary’s richest men during his schoolmate’s run leading the nation. Much of his wealth has been fuelled by government contracts.
Companies owned or operated by Orban’s son-in-law have also fared well in the competition for government work, winning lucrative EU -funded contracts to upgrade street lighting in towns and cities across the nation.
In January, the EU ‘s anti-fraud monitor found “serious irregularities” and “conflicts of interest” in the awarding of those contracts, which totalled more than 40 million euros.
But Brussels-based investigators are virtually powerless to do anything about it. Authority to pursue the matter resides in Hungary, with prosecutors who are widely perceived to do the bidding of the ruling party.
That is typical of the EU ‘s dilemma in how to address Hungary’s piece-by-piece moves against the rule of law and democratic norms.
Other countries, too, may have Hungary’s back. Away from the campaign trail, Orban can often be seen joking around with fellow leaders at EU summits in Brussels. If they were to move against Orban, it would cost them comity and allies at an already fractious time.
It could also cost them politically at home.
Orban’s relentless attacks on refugees and immigrants have been a winning message in Hungary. Others, including Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, have taken notice and adopted similarly hard-line messages, while publicly welcoming the Hungarian prime minister as an honoured guest.
Far from fearing the EU ‘s wrath, Orban’s allies see the historical pendulum swinging their way.
“More and more, political leaders in Europe are coming to the same conclusion,” ruling party spokesman Balazs Hidveghi said. “Viktor Orban is right.”
“Orban doesn’t want to leave the EU. He really wants to change the EU.”
SENIOR GERMAN OFFICIAL