With its scapegoat gone, Europe is forced to finally get honest with itself

 

With its scapegoat gone, Europe is forced to finally get honest with itself

 

Life after Viktor Orbán means that, in the future, leaders will have no one to blame but themselves.

 

April 24, 2026 7:57 pm CET

By Sebastian Starcevic

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-leaders-cyprus-summit-divisions-ukraine-energy-budget-talks/

 

NICOSIA, Cyprus — When EU leaders arrived in Cyprus for two days of talks, the mood was as sunny as the Mediterranean island itself. The absence of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who skipped the summit after losing an election — for 16 years the person who caused his counterparts problems — guaranteed that.

 

But after intensive discussions about the bloc’s mutual defense clause, energy policy and its €1.8 trillion seven-year budget, Europe’s heads of state and government finally had to be honest with themselves: Their problems — and their differences of opinion — are a lot bigger than one man.

 

“Orbán was in certain aspects probably the fall guy everybody … was standing behind,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal told POLITICO in an interview on the sidelines of the summit. In the future, leaders would have “to be vocal and honest about their intention.”

 

And across the two-day talking shop, the honesty gradually seeped out.

 

The first cracks appeared on Ukraine. While some leaders spoke in favor of Kyiv rapidly joining the bloc, others were quick to hit the brakes. Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who was in attendance on day one in Ayia Napa — a reality check, telling reporters Kyiv becoming a member of the EU anytime soon was simply not “realistic,” if Zagreb’s years of wrangling to get into the club are anything to go by.

 

Then there was energy. EU leaders discussed “short-term measures” to weather the global energy shock caused by the war in the Middle East at Thursday night’s talks, but ultimately agreed to punt them down the road, Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said, tasking finance ministers to meet and come up with “very specific proposals” in a month or so.

 

“We hope that we are going to have a general approach agreement by June,” he added.

 

But the continent is already facing jet fuel shortages, with Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas warning on Tuesday that countries may have to share their emergency reserves.

 

“Extremely difficult negotiation”

That was just the first day. If day one was the shot — security, energy and the always-thorny topic of EU enlargement — day two was the chaser: budget discussions. But while it might seem a comparatively softer subject than hard geopolitics, it ended up being no less contentious.

 

Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten told reporters on the way into the day two talks that Brussels’ long-term budget needed “modernization” and that the “size of the budget needs to substantially go down.” He was backed up by Germany’s Friedrich Merz.

 

That puts them at odds with other member countries, such as Poland, who want to fill up the EU cash pot, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who made an impassioned case for a big budget.

 

“It’s either higher national contributions or it’s lower spending capacity. That’s the only options that are there,” she told reporters at a press conference after the meeting was over. And, she argued, “Lower spending capacities would mean less Europe exactly when more Europe is needed.”

 

 

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (C) speaks with Cyprus’ President Nikos Christodoulides (L) and European Council President Antonio Costa (2nd L) after the European Council on April 24, 2026. | Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni summed up the situation, telling reporters the budget is an “extremely difficult negotiation.”

 

An EU official, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, told POLITICO there was also disagreement among leaders in the room on Friday about when to start repaying the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the main chunk of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery plan.

 

And there was no Orbán needed for that.

 

Honeymoon’s over

That’s not to say they didn’t find some common ground. A few voiced optimism about the EU’s chances of finding consensus without the pugnacious Hungarian premier.

 

“For the first time in years there are no Russians in the room,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk posted on social media, alluding to Orbán’s closeness to President Vladimir Putin. “Huge relief.”

 

Michal, the Estonian prime minister, told POLITICO that without Orbán in the room, leaders were going through a honeymoon period.

 

“You can feel the positive energy,” he said. “Viktor Orbán was a symbol somewhat — nothing personal — but the symbol was that he was inside the European Union, enjoying everything that is inside the EU … but at the same time, fighting against the European Union.

 

“And now that legacy is outside the room, I would say yes, you can feel it. Everybody’s talking about what will happen in Europe next.”

 

What happens next depends on whether leaders can get over their differences on everything from Ukraine’s membership to the bloc’s finances. As an “informal” gathering of leaders, EU jargon for a meeting without a collective statement at the end, the two-day talks in Cyprus were never going to be a summit where big decisions got made.

 

That will happen at a formal summit on June 18, about two months away, in the far less glamorous setting of Brussels.

 

By then, the glow produced by Orban’s departure will really be over, and leaders will need more honesty than ever.

 

Jacopo Barigazzi, Giorgio Leali, Nektaria Stamouli and Gabriel Gavin contributed reporting from Cyprus.