The route here, just as with the migration issue, has been without consulting the citizenry and also without the full agreement between states. Brussels is pro-war, and its actions prove it.
At first it was just about sending helmets, then about sanctions - but of course, not on energy carriers, then, yes, on those as well. Then came transfers of arms: initially firearms, then tanks, then planes. Financial aid was next: multiple packages of tens of billions. The count currently totals around a hundred billion euros. Funding, vehicles and weapons have been supplied but the situation is getting worse instead of better. We are one step away from the West sending soldiers to Ukraine. This is a war vortex that could drag Europe into the abyss,
Prime Minister Viktor Orban summarized in a social media post the progression of the process, which are worth examining step by step.
Did Viktor Orban foresee the Brussels future vis-a-vis Russian-Ukrainian war?
The Hungarian PM has represented a pro-peace stance from the very beginning. Soon after the Russian invasion began in February 2022, he made an attempt to localize the conflict in order to calm Brussels's bellicose mood. He referred to the conflict as a "fraternal war between Slavic peoples" and advocated the approach already tried in 2014. Back then, the Crimean conflict remained a Ukrainian-Russian conflict, with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European leaders at the time refusing to let it "escalate and drawn us all into it", as Viktor Orban said during a panel discussion with the heads of German weekly Cicero in Berlin.
And of course the "what if?" question does not do us much good while we are feeling the effects of the conflict in our daily lives, but the idea of what kind of Europe we would be living in today if the conflict had been isolated is worth a thought experiment. But in reality, in its absence, the EU has taken the wrong, and from the outset the 'Ukraine OR Russia' narrative has dominated EU thinking, and not the imposition of peace as soon as possible. This approach to prolonging the war is also reflected in statements such as pro-war Ursula von der Leyen's "conviction" that "Ukraine will prevail and that Europe will stand with you every step of the way, through thick and thin" or that "we cannot let Russia win". Thinking in terms of who should win or not win does not put the attainment of peace in the most desirable position. It is telling that in the quotes from speeches by the European Commission president, the word 'peace' was not mentioned once, but at most referred to peace as a 'shattered illusion'. The logic of war dominates in Brussels.
But we can also recall from among the endless list of pro-war declarations, that of Frans Timmermans, serving as executive vice-president of the European Commission until the fall of 2023, who said following the outbreak of the war that decisions should be taken that hurt the Russian side, even if they hurt the European Union. While no member state would question the responsibility of the aggressor in the war, the EU leadership's strategy is not determined by a desire for peace or by putting the community's own interests first. It seems that pro-war politicians in Brussels would sacrifice everything for the sake of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Step one: Brussels entices Ukraine with helmets and hope of EU membership
In January 2022, when Russian troops were already massing in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, former German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht spoke out in support of the German government's decision against sending lethal weapons to Ukraine.
The German government has made it clear that we do not send arms to crisis zones because we do not want to further fuel the conflicts there. I think that is the right way to go in this case, as well,
Lambrecht argued back then, on which for a very brief time there was agreement at EU level. The minister added that Germany would show its solidarity by sending 5,000 military helmets to Ukraine at the request of the Ukrainian embassy;.
It was around this time that famous investigative pieces such as those put out by Bloombergor Washington Post revealed that the Russian military industry was practically surviving entirely on semiconductor chips extracted from dishwashers and refrigerators.
Among EU institution leaders, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, was the first to visit Kyiv, which took place on April 1, 2022. The EP president made three promises to Ukraine: holding the aggressor accountable, confirming that the institution she chairs will support Ukraine in its EU candidate status and finally, that the EU will take care of Ukrainian refugees. It did not take long for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to also pay a visit to the Ukrainian president. One of the faces of the West's pro-war policies visited the country later that month. The recurring themes of such meetings were support and EU membership for Ukraine, in fact, Zelensky signed the country's application for EU membership on February 28, 2022, soon after the war started.
However, EU enlargement with Ukraine has proved to be a very sensitive issue.
Partly because, since the beginning of the process, there have been doubts as to whether Ukraine fulfills any of the conditions for membership. The Copenhagen criteria set complex expectations for those wishing to join. Political requirements include the existence of a stable democracy and the rule of law, while economic requirements include a functioning and competitive market economy. In addition to these, it also sets out a more abstract expectation that enlargement should be carried out in such a way that the level of European integration is not diminished. These criteria identify the problem itself. The economy of a country at war is rarely described in analyses as competitive and sustainable. But now, under Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), "any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union".
Article 2 of the Treaty states that "The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities".
The fact that the Ukrainian law on minorities not only fails to solve the situation of the indigenous Hungarian minority, which has been continuously disenfranchised since 2015, according to the Presidency of the Hungarian Cultural Association of Transcarpathia (KMKSZ), but was even criticised by the Venice Commission. The other key issue in Ukraine is the high level of corruption. As was known before the outbreak of the war, Ukraine was ranked 34th out of 193 countries in the world in the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GITOC) crime index, and third worst in Europe. On the other hand, it was ranked 59th out of 180 countries in Transparency International's corruption ranking in 2021 and 65th worst in 2022. So it is with such a track record that Ukraine started on the path to EU accession, on which it has been speeding along ever since, while the Western Balkan countries are being forced to stand and wait. In terms of time, Albania since 2009, Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2016, Montenegro since 2008, North Macedonia since 2005, Serbia since 2009 have been in line to become members of the European Union.
