The Greenland crisis can be used as a strategic trigger to reinvigorate the Nordic enlargement of the European Union, with Iceland and Norway offered membership. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom should also offer bilateral defence treaties to Oslo and Reykjavík — providing a politically significant safety net should Nato become paralysed.
At first glance, Viktor Orbán’s meeting with Donald Trump seemed a win for the Hungarian PM and his Russia-leaning foreign policy. In reality, it traded campaign support for steps toward energy diversification.
Vladimir Putin would have to cross the airspace of at least one, if not more, EU and Nato member states to reach Budapest. This would mean that one EU country, under US pressure, would have to breach its obligations under EU sanctions and the ICC arrest warrant to grant safe passage to a convicted war criminal and perpetrator of crimes against humanity.
The clear goal is to suffocate what remains of Hungary’s critical civil society and to intimidate independent media ahead of the highly contested 2026 elections — elections that the incumbent Fidesz party would lose if held today, writes Daniel Hegedüs
Iceland and Norway are deeply integrated into the EU’s internal market through the European Economic Area and the Schengen zone, yet formally outside the Union. Both have a history of EU candidacy. Both face a hostile Russia and in increasingly hostile US.
Viktor Orbán’s ‘sovereignty protection law’ grants authorities the unchecked power to surveil NGOs, media outlets, activists, and journalists without limitation, and to subject them to official investigations — at their own expense. The EU Commission has referred it to the Court of Justice — but that allows its implementation until Hungary’s 2026 elections.
There are at least two qualitatively new features of the unfolding events of the Hungarian EU presidency that may fundamentally influence its endgame. This time, the Hungarian government is not confronting the European Parliament or the Commission, but rather all the other member states, writes Daniel Hegedus of the German Marshall Fund.
Viktor Orban’s newly-announced central European “Patriots for Europe” group, with Austria’s FPÖ and the Czech Republic’s ANO, may further fragment the radical right in the European Parliament. However, with an eye on expected national election results and likely prospective members, in the future this group – rather than the ECR or ID – could be the real pool of nationalist, sovereignt-ist parties in government.
The Hungarian government will hold the rotating EU presidency in the second half of 2024, at a critical time for enlargement policy and neighbourhood relations: during parliamentary elections in Georgia and presidential elections in Moldova.
The unanimity criteria should not discourage member states from seeking the deployment of Article 7 against Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. If exercised wisely and strategically, peer pressure may bear fruit.
Although overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, one key campaign instrument of Fidesz was the anti-LGBTQ referendum scheduled parallel to the elections.
Viktor Orbán will never admit in his upcoming election campaign that his Russia-policy over the past 12 years has been a huge, strategic mistake.
The OSCE request to send a full election-observation mission to monitor Hungary’s election is an important step towards guaranteeing its integrity. Now OSCE member states must step up and send observers in appropriate numbers, otherwise it’s a missed opportunity.
Aside from the EPP, Hungary was also protected – at a member states’ level – by key bilateral partners; and not only illiberal countries like Poland, Bulgaria or recently Slovenia – but most importantly also by Germany.
Although the deal is much more a result of the unswerving positions of the Netherlands and the European Parliament than of the German presidency’s negotiation skills, the success is an extremely important face-saving measure for Berlin.
The EU institutions and member states have hardly more than two fully-fledged and one half-baked strategic option to solve this institutional crisis – that may have more far reaching consequences for the EU than Brexit.