Viktor Orbán goes rogue

 

Viktor Orbán goes rogue

 

Fuming EU officials plot to restrain self-declared president of Europe.

 

JULY 8, 2024 10:05 PM CET

BY CSONGOR KÖRÖMI AND BARBARA MOENS

https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-europe-president-elections-2024-volodymyr-zelenskyy-xi-jinping-budapest/

 

Since Budapest took over the rotating EU presidency last week, Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán has been zooming around like a cat on meth.

 

From Kyiv to meet his bête noire Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to Moscow for a chinwag with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, to Beijing to press flesh with Chairman Xi Jinping, the Hungarian prime minister has carried out a dizzying program of global diplomacy which, he says, is designed to bring peace to Ukraine.

 

But Orbán's hyperactive hopscotching has left Europe's real presidents rolling their eyes, with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and European Council boss Charles Michel both slamming the Hungarian leader as he steals their thunder and stirs the pot in Brussels.

 

The ruckus began on social media last Tuesday, day two of the six-month Hungarian presidency of the Council of the EU, with a hype video which purposely painted Orbán as a man on a mission.

 

A grand motorcade blaring sirens and flashing blue and red lights en route “for peace.” Dramatic music, action movie-style shots and — 2,100 kilometers later, in the capital of Ukraine — the man who claims he can prevent a world war appeared.

 

The music became more powerful as he arrived at the presidential palace in Kyiv. Orbán sat down with Ukraine's President Zelenskyy for “three hours of negotiations,” that ended with smiles on both sides and a press conference with a handshake.

 

Just three days later, Orbán was off again — creating much greater controversy among EU leaders who insist he does not speak for them; that his role as Hungarian prime minister as it runs the Council of the EU is diplomatically irrelevant.

 

This time he offered the same hand in Moscow to Putin, Russia's bloodthirsty leader who has been waging war on Ukraine for years and threatening Europe's post-world-war security architecture.

 

Despite protestations from Brussels, Orbán proudly declared that he had come to Moscow as an emissary of the European Union. “We cannot achieve peace without dialogue and diplomatic channels,“ Orbán said in the Kremlin. “I have experienced that the positions are far from each other, but in terms of the restoration of dialogue the first important step was taken today." At the end of his travel video, the Hungarian presidency logo appeared with its Trumpian slogan: Make Europe Great Again.

 

Orbán's visit to Putin, during which he appeared to lack some of the bravado apparent in his Kyiv video, had a boomerang effect, when on Monday morning Putin's forces bombed a children's hospital in Kyiv.

 

The renegade diplomatic mission has killed Hungary's EU presidency stone dead, according to one Brussels insider.

 

“Member states were already irritated by the 'MEGA' motto. But a meeting with Putin will permanently overshadow the Hungarian presidency," an EU diplomat told POLITICO on Friday, after being granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue. “With such a meeting the presidency ends before it has really begun.”

 

But does Orbán really care? Or is he using the presidency as a tool to act like what his supporters at home call him: The leader of Europe?

 

The man on a mission checked in from, whew, Beijing on Monday morning.

 

“China is the only world power that has been clearly committed to peace. This is important for Hungary and for the entire European Union,” said Orbán, genuflecting before Chinese President Xi Jinping who the U.S. — a NATO ally of Hungary — has accused of buttressing Russia's aggression in Ukraine.

 

But the real reason for Orbán's whirlwind first week of the EU presidency could lie closer to home.

 

Orbán's party, Fidesz, just suffered its weakest result in 15 years at the European election, and a new opponent has emerged. Péter Magyar was a longtime Orbán ally, but in February he turned against the Budapest establishment, started a public movement that became a party — and snagged almost 30 percent of the vote at the ballot box. It was the strongest showing by an opposition party in Hungary in the last 15 years.

 

After a severe recession and an empty budget, Orbán has little to offer the public that could win him support. He could, however, present himself as a “peacemaker,” just as he did during the election campaign.

 

“Orbán has traditionally been constructing an expanding foreign policy narrative practically since 2014-15. The current obvious outgrowth of this is the 'Peace Mission' narrative, which is also about pursuing his own economic interests, and which he built up very heavily for his own voter base in the last election," Botond Feledy, a geopolitical analyst at Red Snow, told POLITICO.

 

But Orbán’s tactics could also turn against him. EU ambassadors will discuss the presidency and his recent trips at their meeting Wednesday in Brussels, in a first sign that EU officials could move from public condemnations alone to concrete action to restrain Budapest’s presidency.

 

According to a second EU diplomat, there are growing concerns about Orbán. “It should be clear that he is only representing his own country, but instead he deliberately left a lot of ambiguity,” the diplomat said.

 

The diplomat added that tensions are running high after the first week of the presidency and are expected to rise further approaching the Foreign Affairs Council on July 20, as Hungary continues to block funding to help Ukraine get money to purchase weapons from the EU.

 

A third EU diplomat, who was also granted anonymity to speak freely, told POLITICO: “We are now discussing what exactly to do on Wednesday. There is a very clear political disapproval.”

 

It's unlikely that Brussels has the appetite to try smack Hungary over Orbán's global grandstanding immediately, though analysts say there are mechanisms to deprive Orbán of the presidency.

 

“If they show determination to give a proper response to Orbán’s 'shock and awe' diplomacy aimed at trolling and ridiculing the EU, they can get rid of the Hungarian presidency within weeks,” wrote Dániel Hegedűs, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

 

It would take a qualified, four-fifths majority in the European Council to rewrite the schedule of rotating presidencies and shift the start date of the upcoming Polish presidency by several months.

 

Orbán, for his part, shows little sign of heeding Brussels' calls for restraint — and attempts to terminate his command. He continues to carry out a punishing travel schedule that would make Taylor Swift weep: He's already on his way to Washington for this week's NATO summit.