Shortly after Viktor Orban, as the only head of government at the recent EU summit, cast a historic veto against Brussels' efforts to prolong the war, critical voices against Hungary have intensified.
Many people rightly ask that beyond the obvious harm to the pro-war forces, why the Brussels elite is so hurt by PM Orban's most recent prediction, which once again fundamentally questions the European establishment’s rationality and ability to assess the situation in the long term.
All signs suggest that Orban’s latest ominous warning is not unfounded.
As is known, after the Hungarian government had built a fence along its southern border financed from its own budget in order to block one of the main routes to Europe from the mass influx of illegal migrants and terrorists, Brussels failed to see Hungary as a point of reference, and instead, punished the country in an exemplary manner, with a wide range of ongoing implications. Just to mention one:
While more than 300 people have lost their lives in terrorist attacks caused by migrants across Europe in recent years, Brussels is penalizing the Hungarian government with a one-time fine of 200 million euros and an additional daily penalty of 1 million euros for allegedly "failing to meet EU asylum requirements”.
A few years after the European migration crisis, Brussels faced another challenge, once again responding in the worst possible way. When the COVID-19 pandemic spread across Europe in 2020, vaccine strategy became one of the most pressing topics in public discourse. Beyond curbing the health crisis, it also became a key factor in the competitiveness of recovering economies. However, just as during the migration crisis, when Brussels was busy fulfilling the demands of Western NGOs, during the pandemic, it prioritized serving transatlantic lobbying organizations and EU career politicians,
who, driven by selfish political and economic interests, advocated for the mass procurement of slowly produced and rather costly Western vaccines instead of considering the large quantities of vaccines available from the East. The vaccine procurement, which was crucial for restarting European economies, was not plain sailing. The debacle was further exacerbated by a massive corruption scandal surrounding the special vaccine commissioner appointed by Brussels.
Notably, then European Commissioner for Health Stella Kyriakides, in charge of implementing the EU vaccine strategy, declared from the outset that she would not consider any of the Eastern vaccines available in large quantities at relatively affordable costs. Instead, she signed what later appeared to be forced agreements with major Western pharmaceutical companies—contracts that failed to specify either the quantity or the delivery deadlines of the vaccines, all in exchange for substantial sums transferred to private accounts. As a result, even Germany and France, nations with the largest healthcare budgets in the EU, suffered vaccine shortages for weeks or months, while Hungary, cleverly bypassing Brussels, secured Eastern vaccines and was among the member states with the highest vaccination rate.
After the pandemic, as Europe slowly began its economic recovery—a process that significantly hindered the bloc’s regional competitiveness—many Brussels politicians found themselves struggling to explain yet another scandal.
While the European Parliament was busy investigating Hungary’s alleged rule-of-law and corruption issues, the Qatargate scandal, a massive Brussels corruption case involving millions of euros, erupted like a bombshell. Among others, even the European Parliament’s vice president, Eva Kaili, was implicated.
It is worth noting that in response to these criticisms and calls for accountability, the European elite applied the same well-established tactic as before: the ruthless application of the infamous Brussels double standard. As a result, even to this day, EU institutions—despite their frequent rhetoric on financial transparency—have failed to close the Qatargate case.
Based on the crises discussed above and the corrupt, politically motivated responses from Brussels, it is not difficult to conclude that Viktor Orban’s latest veto—intended to draw Europe's attention to the EU’s lack of overall rationality and assessment abilities—could not have come at a better time.
Over the past decade, Brussels has stumbled from crisis to crisis, repeatedly making poor decisions that have caused immense damage not only to the European community as a whole but also to individual member states.
If Brussels, now adrift without the United States, fails once again to come to its senses—this time on the issue of ending the war—it is almost certain that it will have to reckon with irreparable consequences in the near future.
The author is chief senior analyst at the Szazadveg Public Knowledge Center Foundation.
