By Juan Francisco Carmona is a collaborating analyst at the International Security Centre of the Francisco de Vitoria University.
It is an open secret that Viktor Orbán is the "European Trump" and so he certainly deserves every reproach from what constitutes the "establishment". At the last commemoration of the 1956 armed uprising against the Soviet Union, Orbán denounced the EU's attempt to eliminate a national government in Hungary and its willingness to replace it with a puppet government.
This is how things stand. It is an open secret that the political battle currently raging in Europe and indeed in the West as a whole is a fight to the death between two forces identified as populists and elites. The current Hungarian presidency of the EU Council of Ministers in the second half of 2024 is therefore an opportunity to see the umpteenth battle between these two sides, with the EU as a whole representing the "circle of reason" and Orbán the dissent.
This presidency could not start any worse for the elitist camp. Dominant because it brings together political parties considered moderate right and left in the last European elections, it has actually been thrashed in important founding countries such as France. Populists lurk at the gates of power with a third of the representation in the European Parliament. As this Parliament must approve the new Commission and von der Leyen is the elites' choice, the commissioners' own hearings this November promise to be juicy. But beyond the dull banter of Brussels bureaucracy, Europe and the West are at a pivotal moment. Indeed, the EU, created in the 1950s to preserve peace and prosperity, no longer guarantees either. We may well be on the brink of nuclear war with Russia.
We count for nothing in the international geopolitical sphere. Germany's economic engine is grinding to a halt, raising the spectre of the "stagflation" of the 1970s throughout the Union. What is to be done? The usual? Everyone knows that the ears of Europeans are ripe for alternative proposals. In fact, they already have The succession of elections lost by the Socialists in Germany leads them to derogate from the application of the Schengen treaty on the physical abolition of borders.
The Dutch government calls for the elimination of the so-called 'migration pact'. Italy limits illegal immigration by its own means and only fails when confronted with European legislation, which several countries are therefore pushing for changes. Finally, the general economic situation in which sanctions against Russia because of the war have caused Russia to grow and Europe to shrink, we are being forced to take on the excessive obligations of our climate commitments or to continue to close Volkswagen factories, never better said, the people's cars. Orbán, however, had proposed a rather conventional presidency.
The problem for the Eastern dissidents is their status as net recipients of EU funds, which forces them to exercise restraint. It is also raining on a lot of damp ground, given Brussels' withholding of money for years. Still, convention is not everything and the messages are understandable. While he agrees with the elitists in making improving Europe's competitiveness vis-à-vis other parts of the world a top priority, he disagrees on how to do it.
If he notes, as everyone else does, that European defence must be strengthened, he does so to deter Russia, not to sustain the war effort against Russia. He demonstrates this with the 2 proposal for coherent, merit-based enlargement. That is, to countries that can play by the rules and do not destroy EU policies.
It is a euphemism for: Ukraine not yet. If he talks about stopping illegal immigration, it is because this position has become the benchmark in Europe today. If it calls for yet another reform and reformulation of the cohesion policy, it is because Hungary needs it. Remember that it was the most popular of the European initiatives in Spain, because we have been benefiting from it for a long time and it is the essential foundation of our convinced "Europeanism".
If it proposes a more farmer-centred common agricultural policy, it is because the first chronologically of all European policies at the same time as the common market itself generated protests in spring and summer that reached Brussels. If he finally draws attention to what no one seems to see - demographic problems - it is because he has already addressed them in his domestic policy. The declining birth rate is a major problem in Europe. If we are doing so well, why do the low birth rates indicate that we want to become extinct?
However, all these documented proposals, which have been put on the various agendas of the Council, Parliament and the Commission to end up in endless sterile debates in the autumnal mists of Brussels, do not reveal the substance of the issue.
The only really relevant issue in Brussels is the political realignment of member states and Europe itself. Ortega said that among the European peoples, France was the one most endowed with social grey substance. By this he meant to imply that, politically, at least since the French Revolution, it has set the agenda. That agenda today, whether it is driven by Le Pen, Macron, Von der Leyen or Scholz, has three pillars: physical, legal and economic security; illegal immigration; and purchasing power. In none of them does the elitist side have the competitive advantage.
The declining authority and sovereignty of member states has brought with it constantly changing and increasingly complex laws that are impossible to enforce, leading to increasingly difficult and restricted daily lives for the middle class. To all this has contributed and added to the rampant illegal immigration for which the EU has found no solution but countless excuses by forcing member states for years to apply regulations and jurisprudence that make any remedy unfeasible.
Finally, out of our immense charity and willingness to solve all the world's geopolitical problems without first having solved our own, we have followed American policy in Ukraine to the last drop of our economic blood. We were, according to French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, going to bring Russia to its knees1 and suddenly Germany is no longer producing and has to buy its more expensive gas from Biden, while Russia is thriving in GDP and on the battlefield. In other words, France's economic prostration - closely watched by Brussels - and the political inanity in which its president has placed himself disqualify it from being Europe's diplomatic engine. At the same time, Germany's economic catastrophe and growing economic instability make it unable to remain the industrial engine of a deindustrialised continent. The only thing left for Brussels to do, therefore, is to produce reports, to give lessons from nothing. The most recent is the Draghi report.
As one of the problems is that there is no money, what Draghi obviously proposes is to put more money in. But not modestly, in Brussels things are done in a big way. It requires an investment equivalent to four Marshall plans. I mean, does he recognise that they have left Europe four times worse off than after World War II? It is in this environment of political realignment that the Hungarian presidency must be placed.
The dissident, for once, may hear the same insults and accusations from the same sources, but he has an electoral body to speak to outside Hungary itself. Indeed, this is what has led countless publications in the official elitist sphere, from The Economist to Politico to Le Monde, to speak of "Orbán's real plan for Europe", which would be nothing other than his own domestic political programme.
This model is well known: it is a protectionist nationalism, not so much from an economic point of view as from a social point of view, protective of the average citizen. In short, it responds to those concerns that are now widespread throughout Europe: security, illegal immigration, purchasing power. It is not their fault that because of today's politicians, the rest of Europeans are now beginning to feel the same needs as the Hungarians did some 14 years ago.
Orbán's respect for the traditional family and distrust of the promotion of the LGTBQ movement also corresponds to this. In other words, his resistance to a Wokist ideological agenda championed by the EU. He is obviously accused of contravening the rule of law. Moreover, it is fined for this2 . However, the fines handed out by the European institutions are themselves highly questionable from the point of view of the rule of law, as they are aimed exclusively at political options that do not conform to this established power. As for Orbán's national success, one would have to go back to the philosopher Fichte who said that all nations laugh at each other and all of them are right. It is difficult to talk about other people's things, which is why Orbán's political advisor, Balász Orbán, curiously enough with the same surname, has written an interesting book on the subject, "The Hungarian Strategy" . It is safe to say that the essence of domestic policy is no different from what we know abroad: family policy, immigration, sovereignty. Nothing surprising in this respect. The most peculiar thing, in the eyes of the elite, is probably the fourteen years that this policy has been supported by the Hungarian electorate. Much has been said about the transition from an original liberalism to Orban's current positions. Rather than a strategic positioning or a political calculation, it seems to be a natural evolution, parallel to the evolution of the globalised world from Fukuyama's "end of history" to the current circumstances.
Ultimately it is a lesson learned from a mature politician of the need to exercise creativity in the face of the outdated recipes of a pocket liberalism incapable of dealing with a new reality. Punishing or insulting dissent is no longer helpful. Orbán has two months left in his EU presidency, if he is not ousted first.
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