Ah! Secret EU plan against Orban! Well FT, if you don‘t produce more of this document, and any kind of proof that this is more than a research paper, I call BS. There is so little in this article supporting the monstrous claim that the EU is secretly planning to devalue Hungary‘s currency, that I get the feeling that this is the expression of an anti EU agenda by the FT itself. There you go, that‘s my monstrous assumption.
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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I still think it would be cleaner if they used the official mechanism for this, ie. stripping then of voting rights, rather than resorting to extra-legal tactics like these which is essentially just blackmail.
They should use everything. The time for appeasing this wannabe dictator is long over.
I wonder if he's being treated with kid gloves because he gives an excuse for not aiding Ukraine. "We wanted to, but it's that damn Orbán"
Not unthinkable, but I doubt it. It was the same before Ukraine. The issues is that consensus is the basis of the EU. To degree that makes sense - otherwise states wouldn't be willing to surrender their power to a central govenrment - but it's been overdone quite a bit. We can't afford to ignore minorities that account for 30 to 49% of the population, but we also can't afford not to ignore the 10% that isn't willing to cooperate.
I figure you're right, it really doesn't seem all that likely but it was just a thought that popped into my head.
But yeah, it's interesting to see what this current "turbulence" will lead to. Requiring consensus only has a chance to work if everyone is acting in good faith, so when a member state is well on its way to becoming essentially a dictatorship with aims that are directly at odds with the EU's goals, there's simply no way consensus will work.
It's interesting that the EU really doesn't have too many good mechanisms to do anything about bad-faith actors in the first place. Eg. using Hungary's funding as a lever has been tried, but because of the consensus requirement, Orbán can essentially hold decisions hostage until he gets what he wants.
Too many systems have been built with the implicit assumption that all participating actors are acting in good faith, and a single bad-faith actor can actually cause remarkable amounts of trouble because there's no mechanisms for stopping them
They can't. Hungary was protected by Poland and now will be by Slovakia. The EU Commission can theoretically act independently but in practice, this is political. And the EU Council can only take official action if Hungary has no friends at all.
And the EU Council can only take official action if Hungary has no friends at all.
On the other hand, EU Council would not take action if Hungary has even only one enemy.
Yeah, that's the price they pay for not acting while the disease hadn't spread yet
extra-legal tactics like these which is essentially just blackmail
Politics?
Based
Intra-EU trade war? That wasn't on my Bingo card for this year
I am very skeptical about this.
Secret plans by the EU to hurt one of its own member countries? And the proof is a document seen by FT?
And rather than sanction Orban and his accomplices, or making it harder for his country to work against the EU, the plan supposedly is to harm from the bottom up? And in secret, even though decisions/resolutions are made by an open parliament of countries?
To me, this report sounds a little bit too much like those Russian "news" that you'd find on Sputnik & co. Perhaps even like preparation for another Brexit scenario where they fan resentment through misinformation and social media seeding (remember these terms? "red tape," "Brussel bureaucrats," "autonomy," "it's unreformable," ...).
This all seems so implausible.
They can't cut funding but they can enact all that?
strategy to explicitly target Hungary’s economic weaknesses, imperil its currency and drive a collapse in investor confidence in a bid to hurt “jobs and growth”
How? Supposedly there is a document outlining all this, then why not mention how this is supposed to work?
And how are these plans supposed to compel Hungary to do something if they are secret?
It may be me, but this all doesn’t sound like a stable relationship. Plus, it will give other EU members (especially where the growing ultra right wing anti-EU parties are reigning) more reason for their own Brexit-like plans.
You have to draw the line somewhere. Enough is enough. They've been nothing but cooperative until now and all the goodwill has been taken advantage of and painted as weakness. It's about damn time they switched from passive to active pushback.
And it's not going to provide anti-EU people with anything they haven't dreamed up themselves long ago. Have you listened to anti-EU propaganda? It's mostly demented, wild conspiracies.
The EU is an association of like-minded societies. If Hungary doesn't feel like it belongs anymore they can start considering withdrawing.
Which countries are that though?
Poland has a pro EU government now, albeit society remains split. Still if they wouldn't align with the EU, they would have to align with Russia. They are fiercly against that.
Slovakia and Hungary are in the same boat. Orban doesn't really want to leave the EU. He knows that aligning with Russia would kill the countries economy and he either gets to rule over rubble or the people will kill him.
They instead want to play the EU and Russia by playing both sides for as much opportunistic gain as possible. By not playing, the EU calls the bluff.
Poland has a pro EU government now, albeit society remains split. Still if they wouldn't align with the EU, they would have to align with Russia. They are fiercly against that.
Poles being anti-EU is something that ex-government / political right has been trying to manufacture for years without any internal success. We trust EU institutions more than our own. We might be split on some policies but majority is strongly for at least current level of integration.
They still ought to use the official mechanism rather than this which is just blackmail