15 July 2024
Why and How the Hungarian Presidency Must Be Stopped
It took less than a week for Viktor Orbán to make the worst predictions about the Hungarian Presidency of the Council become true. Yet with a twist. If many had warned about the danger that such a Presidency would have paralysed the internal operation of the EU, nobody expected this could also cause confusion and damage to the Union’s foreign policy. How the EU Member States will react to it may define the overall credibility of the Union on the international stage, particularly at a time when it increasingly faces significant challenges both from within and the outside. Continue reading >>
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09 July 2024
How Viktor Orbán Challenges the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy
Since the start of the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU), the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán pursued an active foreign policy. He went to Kyiv for a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, made a surprise visit to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, attended an informal summit of the Organisation of Turkic States hosted by Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan, and then flew to Beijing for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Orbán’s self-declared ‘peace diplomacy’ illustrates – once more – the challenges surrounding the EU’s external representation. His visits are nothing else than an expression of Hungarian national foreign policy. Also in that capacity, however, his actions are problematic in view of Hungary’s obligations under the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy. Continue reading >>23 October 2023
Who Speaks on Behalf of the European Union?
“It’s a cacophony. It’s ridiculous”. This is how an EU diplomat described the flow of EU statements following the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas. The divergent reactions reveal the existence of institutional tensions about the Union’s external representation, which undermine the coherence and credibility of the EU’s external action. The war between Israel and Hamas concerns issues of foreign and security policy. Whether one likes it or not, this is an area where the Commission has a more limited role – also with respect to external representation. A certain restraint or, at the very least, closer coordination with the Member States and the European External Action Service could have been expected. Continue reading >>
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