The EU's unanimity requirement on foreign policy decisions has handed Viktor Orbán a weapon that no amount of diplomacy, economic leverage, or political pressure has managed to neutralize. And the two countries best positioned to change it - France and Germany - have consistently refused to do so.
Clement Beaune, Emmanuel Macron's former European adviser, identifies this as the bloc's central miscalculation, Le Monde columnist Sylvie Kauffmann reports in the Financial Times. The EU's major mistake, Beaune says, was "to believe that member states, particularly those from central Europe, would inevitably follow the path of liberal democracy." When that assumption proved wrong, "Hvylya" notes, Europe had no tools to respond.
"We did not anticipate what happened, so we don't have the tools," Beaune told Kauffmann. One obvious answer - abandoning unanimity on foreign policy votes - remained off the table for a specific reason. "France and Germany always opposed the idea, because they thought it protected them. In fact, it protected Orbán," he explained.
The consequences are immediate and measurable. Orbán has vetoed a 90 billion euro EU loan to Ukraine at a moment when Kyiv's forces depend on Western financing to continue fighting. Hungary's foreign minister Peter Szijjarto has admitted coordinating with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on sanctions targeting Moscow - a direct subversion of the EU's stated policy.
The institutional failure compounds earlier mistakes. Western European leaders completely misread the impact of the 2015 refugee crisis on post-communist societies unprepared for multi-ethnic immigration. Their insistence on mandatory refugee quotas, over objections from central European leaders and then-European Council President Donald Tusk, strengthened Orbán's position and contributed to the victory of Poland's nationalist PiS party. Each miscalculation reinforced the next, building an illiberal movement that now operates inside Europe's own decision-making structures.
Also read: "Hvylya" reported on opposition accusations that Orbán invited Russian spies to interfere in Hungarian elections.