Hungary democratic backsliding and the fragmentation of the EU
Hungary has banned some deputies for the first time for protesting against an anti-Gay Pride march law. These are the very values that are supposed to be at the core of the EU project.
Hungary’s parliament for the first time suspended six opposition lawmakers for their role in the chaotic March 18 session, when they set off fireworks to protest against the ruling party’s attempt to undermine democracy and push through legislation restricting assembly rights, specifically banning a Budapest Pride march.
As bne IntelliNews has reported, Europe is under extreme pressure and could fall apart if this continues. The signs of fragmentation are everywhere. We have another piece on EU members that have raised the possibility of stripping Hungary and Slovakia – as the most pro-Putin states (they are not the only ones, some of those in the south of Europe don’t really care about the Ukraine conflict either) – of their right to veto EU votes to support Ukraine. But there are only 14 of these states and you need a vote of 27 members – i.e. including both Hungary and Slovakia – to get a change in the rules through.
The idea would be to invoke Article 7 of the EU treaty which does allow for a member to be stripped of their voting rights if they are backsliding on the ill-defined “values” in Article 2 of the treaty. And specifically, the vote to ban Budapest Gay Pride does exactly this. But it's just not possible to do in practice.
At the same time Hungary and Serbia, not an EU country, entered into a military pact in April, which is another crack in the facade. This comes at a time when the EU is scrambling to build up some sort of collective security umbrella now that US President Donald Trump has snapped the one that has been in place throughout the Cold War closed. Politico just did a very nice piece showing that Europe’s entire security strategy has been to wait for American reinforcements to arrive if Russia attacks, and on the basis of logistics alone, Europe is unable to defend itself against such an attack. All this talk of the EU’s economy being ten times bigger than Russia’s so of course it will win is nonsense as Russia has shown by being able to fight a proxy war against Nato in Ukraine and winning. At least that’s what US Vice President JD Vance said yesterday.
Another crack is the coalition of the willing response to Trump’s sliding towards the Ukraine conflict exit. Previously it was the US and EU collectively backing Ukraine, but now UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron can’t even get enough EU members together to back an official EU policy, so they took the rump and gave it a nice name. Even most of the members of the “willing” are not that keen and won’t commit themselves to supplying Ukraine let alone sending peacekeepers. And now the UK, Kyiv’s most ardent supporter, has admitted that sending even 10,000 soldiers – everyone agrees this is a woefully inadequate number – is unworkable, which we have said from the start. Likewise, Macron downgraded the “peacekeeping” force to a “resistance” force that will stay well in the rear, you know, in case they meet some Russians and have to shoot at them. No one wants, or will even contemplate, that.
In the meantime, the Kremlin must be laughing into its sleeve. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced another three-day ceasefire yesterday for the May Day parade (following Trump’s 30-day plan and Putin’s 30-hour Easter ceasefire), which is clearly a gesture designed to make Russia look cooperative to Trump and paint Ukraine in a bad light as Zelenskiy continues to reject Trump’s terrible seven-point “final offer” peace plan – quite rightly, in my opinion. Still, this means he will have to fight on, and Putin is ready for that too. Pyongyang admitted yesterday it is sending troops to Russia to help in the fight.
In short, things look pretty grim for Ukraine and the only thing that is keeping Kyiv in the game is its stellar progress in developing and producing drones, which have been a game changer and basically make a modern war unwinnable. There was a report this morning that Ukraine is now producing 95% of its own drones after production went up 500% last year. They make no man’s land a killing zone and effectively prevent infantry advances after artillery bombardment – the standard tactic. Amazingly, a huge and very costly push to take the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk seems to have failed. That suggests that Zelenskiy can fight on indefinitely, if he can find enough men.
This actually puts pressure on Putin as he needs to stop the war, which is bleeding away Russian resources. He can probably keep this up longer than Zelenskiy can, but at what cost? I'm pretty sure he already thinks it's time to cut his losses and with Trump he can get a good deal – Trump has already agreed to most of Putin’s demands. The problem now is getting Zelenskiy to agree.
There was a lot of talk about deal details yesterday, but we are now in a very delicate period, and it is not at all clear what will come out of it. If I were Zelenskiy I would start talks now as Putin is clearly willing to compromise. He is at the end of the day a pragmatist and he has offered to start “unconditional” talks. And Zelenskiy has few places to go if he doesn’t start talks. Macron said yesterday that the EU will “significantly increase the pressure” on Russia in ten days time. How? The EU is now looking entirely helpless as it doesn’t have any leverage over either Putin or Trump. It can’t even ban Russian LNG imports, which are actually going up, let alone win a war in a direct clash with Russia.