Hungary in 2022 is not part of the West – a fact now established beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaking at the Bálványos Free Summer University in Băile Tușnad on July 23, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said many different things – all of which share the characteristic of being disturbing.
He admitted that his country has worsened its relations with Poland and other Visegrad neighbors; praised Donald Trump; lambasted “gender lunacy”; predicted the fall of Western civilization; and advocated the “clean race approach” as opposed to “the mixed race one”. These remarks prompted one of his longtime advisers, who compared his comments to “pure Nazi text”, to quit.
In Orbán’s world, neither the European Union (EU) nor NATO should help Ukraine since – in his view – “this war is a war between two Slavic peoples”. Instead, he believes that Western powers should acknowledge that Ukraine will not win and instead seek to negotiate with Russia.
To an outsider, all these statements may seem shocking – yet, they are not.
The recurrent attempts to deepen relations with Moscow, the shutdown of the Central European University that was forced to relocate from Budapest to Vienna, and the attack on media freedom and rule of law in line with Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” approach – all reveal how Hungary has been carrying out a systematic and deliberate policy against the EU and NATO for almost a decade.
Back in the day, when Orbán sided with former British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was no fan of EU institutions, his behavior may have been perceived as somewhat opportunistic and even slightly comical. Today, however, Orbán and his cronies, including Péter Szijjártó who went to Moscow last week with an intent to secure a gas deal, no longer look amusing or irrelevant.
On the contrary, they are outright dangerous. Hungary once again, as European Pravda’s editor Sergiy Sydorenko rightly put it, is picking the evil side – the same way it did in 1939.
Not only is Budapest talking about “pure races”, but it is also emulating Russia in its approach toward Ukraine. For years, Budapest has been issuing passports to its ethnic minority in the western region of Transcarpathia – a move that copycats Russia’s policy in eastern Ukraine and violates Ukrainian law that bans dual citizenship.
Like Moscow, it has also systematically tried to taint Ukraine’s attempts to establish Ukrainian as the only language for teaching in educational institutions, persistently claiming that Kyiv discriminates against the Hungarian ethnic minority.
This is a fabricated circumstance that Olivér Várhelyi, the European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement, attempted to use to undermine the deal with Ukraine-EU Association Council in 2021, despite being in the EU office, which bans its officials from promoting their home country’s agenda.
Once an empire, always an empire
There are several explanations as to why Budapest is ready to defend the Russian worldview and emulate it.
Chief among them is the historical one.
Part of the once influential Austro-Hungarian Empire that collapsed after World War I, it is still reminiscent of the days when its political say and impact mattered.
Yes, there was considerable sympathy and support from the West when in October 1956 Hungarians rose up against Soviet domination only to have their uprising crushed by Soviet tanks.
But this should not cause us to overlook another very pertinent fact that is so relevant for today. In the late 1930s, Hungary became an ally of Nazi Germany and subsequently many thousands of its soldiers lost their lives in Ukraine and Russia seeking to impose the fascist imperialistic view of the world on their neighbors to the east.
Miklós Horthy with Adolf Hitler
Is Orban behaving any differently than his predecessor Miklós Horthy in 1938 when he aligned himself against the democratic world with a fascist imperialist, Hitler, whom Putin is in effect emulating today?
Even now, one can feel the notes of imperialistic pride on the streets of Budapest, which simply refuses to acknowledge that it is a small country fully dependent on Russian fossil fuels and EU budget donations that Orbán is happy to receive – a fact he alluded to in his Băile Tușnad’s speech, saying, “we have managed to separate our big debate on the whole gender issue from the debate on EU money, and the two are now moving forward on separate tracks.”
While it is easy to blame Orbán for what Hungary has become under his rule, the fact that the latest parliamentary election held in 2022 was described by the OSCE as “well administered and professionally managed but marred by the absence of a level playing field” shows that his worldview speaks to many Hungarian people, even if he suppresses his opponents.
The big question now is how will the EU and NATO respond to this overt declaration of hostility by one of its member states?
While in May, the European Commission finally notified the Hungarian government that Brussels had triggered the so-called conditionality regulation against the country due to systemic deficiencies that threaten the EU’s financial interests, regrettably, this move is far from enough. Not least because it often takes too much time for the EU’s cumbersome decision-making machine to act at a time when Moscow continues its blatant gas blackmail, halving the supply volumes via Nord Stream 1 and wanting to lower them, and the EU drawing up a plan aimed at curtailing the bloc’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels, which Hungary vehemently opposes.
When it comes to NATO, which is yet to produce any meaningful response to Hungary’s behavior, it is difficult, if not outright, impossible to understand what Budapest adds to the Alliance’s collective defense. Not only has it been obstructing NATO’s relations with Ukraine, which has proved with blood that it can resist an enemy the size of Russia, but it is also the lone objector blocking the establishment of a Center for Democratic Resilience within the Alliance.
Furthermore, the fact that Viktor Orbán believes that Hungary should be able to defend itself from the west due to an influx of “mixed races” while also blaming NATO for not accepting Russia’s ultimatum issued in 2021 – another two points he made in his now seminal speech – questions not just Budapest’s commitment to the Alliance, which has recently branded Russia as its direct threat, but also makes the situation look … well, incredibly ludicrous.
That being said, Hungary behaves like that for the simple reason that it can afford to do so as neither the EU nor NATO’s key treaties contain provisions with an explicit procedure for expelling member states should they breach rules – or indeed suspending rights, having a chat in private or other obscure methods.
With Orbán poised to rule for at least one more term, and several countries in Europe either openly or covertly supporting his ideas while also wanting to be part of NATO or the EU (or already within), it is becoming high time the two organizations created this procedure and embedded it in its treaties.
Without it, the situation will, arguably, only get worse.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily those of the Kyiv Post.
