The mysteries of the European Union are many and varied: what is the comitology? What is a trialogue? And, above all: what is the difference between the European Council, the Council of the European Union and the Council of Europe? But, in recent months, all these questions fall short next to what is, perhaps, the most widespread doubt in the corridors of Brussels: What is Viktor Orbán thinking about?
To the Hungarian prime minister, like to the folklore, he loves to feed the mystery. Tenacious anti-communist leader, he came to power shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall with a fiercely anti-Soviet message. Thirty years later, it is the best friend of the nostalgic Putin within the European Union. Logic dictates that Orbán, like the other leaders of the so-called Visegrad Group (which brings together Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic), should be in the front line of European resistance to the expansionist delusions of comrade Vladimir Vladimirovich, if only because in the lottery of Russian invasions, Hungary has many chances to be the next winner.
And yet, yet (to oil) Orbán has had the European Union during this last month. For once the 26 manage to convince Germany to do something that it does not want to do (and that, moreover, harms it economically), Viktor goes bad and blocks the so-called sixth package of European sanctions, the most important so far , because it includes the almighty Russian oil.
At the European council earlier this week, the heads of state and government managed to get Orbán to stop vetoing the measures announced to great fanfare by the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in the European Parliament more than one month. Here we should also make a point to remember that neither Von der Leyen, neither Charles Michel nor Josep Borrell, As much as they are the visible faces of the European resistance to the invader, they have the power to impose sanctions at the European level or to decide when and how weapons are sent to Ukraine. That’s up to the member states, and that’s why lately we have European summits every two or three weeks.
So, although it seems that the European Union has been paralyzed for a month because of Orbán and his veto of a European embargo on Putin’s oil, the reality is that this sixth package of sanctions has been a great victory for the EU in its strategy to stop (ie win) this senseless war. Since the first package of sanctions was adopted in this round (remember that the EU had previously sanctioned Russia for the annexation of Crimea), all governments knew that the hardest part was yet to come. The only way to hit Putin where it really hurts (like many, in the portfolio, like a few, in the portfolio that finances the war) was cut off the supply of millions of euros in exchange for gas and oil. But getting out of Russian oil and gas when you’re more addicted to opiates than Johnny Depp is no easy feat. Some countries, like Germany, Italy, and Hungary, have a worse addiction problem than others.
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The strategy is clear: let’s start with the easy (coal), continue with the difficult (oil) until we reach the impossible (gas). The idea of staggering the sanctions in order to modulate the Union’s response depending on the intensity of Putin’s aggression is currently working. Much to Viktor’s chagrin, who began these negotiations asking for the Hungarian recovery funds that the European Commission is keeping frozen to be unblocked and received in response one more disciplinary procedure (the so-called conditionality mechanism, which allows the EU hold funds if a country is shown to be using European money to act against EU values).
In the end, Viktor, like the folkloric women, left the forum but not before giving one last blow with his bata de cola: The package of measures included sanctions on the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, which Orbán has managed to block. God knows what Orbán thinks. Perhaps he likes the patriarch’s shawl.