Power has corrupted Viktor Orban, who is in turn corrupting his own country. The Prime Minister of Hungary has manipulated the electoral system, subjugated the media and the universities, and undermined the judiciary.
He has created a client class of cronies who do his bidding, which includes making sure that anyone with the moral courage to oppose him is impeded at every turn.
Orban is himself a man of brilliant gifts, who has long thrived by defending the Hungarian nation against the European Union, which he loves to insult, while never actually suggesting that Hungary should leave the EU.
In a speech delivered in 2014, quoted in the profile of him published on ConHome in 2018, he declared that “a democracy does not have to be liberal”, and suggested it is possible “to construct a new state built on illiberal and national foundations within the European Union”.
To these characteristic provocations one may reply that a democracy does at least have to be democratic, and run in a reasonably fair way, and that Orban, with his propensity for nobbling independent voices, has for some time failed to meet these tests.
Which presents the EU with an appalling problem. It is in a long-running dispute with Hungary which the withholding of EU funds has failed to resolve, and in the second half of next year, Hungary is due to hold the EU presidency, a timetable agreed in 2016.
A few days ago, the European Parliament voted by 442 to 114, with 33 abstentions, for a motion which questioned how Hungary can hold the presidency
“in view of incompliance with EU law and the values enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union as well as the principle of sincere cooperation”.
Daniel Freund, the German Green MEP who helped draft the resolution, told Brussels Playbook, published by Politico, that the European Parliament could “boycott the Hungarian presidency” by refusing to give Orban or his ministers a stage, or even by ceasing legislative work, and went on:
“If the Council puts an autocrat in front of us … who has repeatedly called for the European Parliament to be abolished — then we won’t enter into these debates.”
What a gift to Orban such protests are: with what scorn he can reject such ineffectual preaching. How he loves to enrage his critics by demonstrating that under his leadership, Hungary takes an independent line, opposing EU sanctions on Russia and NATO arms deliveries to Ukraine, and boasting of its Prime Minister’s close relationship with Vladimir Putin.
Hungary has a population of about 9.7 million which is in decline. Orban is bluffing: he is a weak man posing as a world statesman. In a sense, all this is a minor problem, which ought to be manageable.
But it also raises profound questions about the nature and future development of the EU, questions which cannot forever be evaded.
The British Government hoped the admission of proud, newly independent nations such as Hungary and Poland, which joined the EU along with eight other countries in 2004, would promote the development of a Europe of nation states.
But even in that development were to occur, there would need, presumably, to be some mechanism for expelling any member of the club which persistently refused to observe its rules.
And however minimal the rules might be, they would presumably include the holding of free and fair elections, and the maintenance of an independent judiciary.
The best, it may be retorted, is the enemy of the good. Politicians have to work with the materials that are to hand. There is a war going on in Ukraine and now is not the moment to threaten Hungary with dire consequences if it fails to mend its ways.
All very true, no doubt. But thinking back to Brexit, one can’t help recalling that some Remainers proclaimed in all sincerity that the EU is a shining beacon of freedom, suggested it guaranteed the maintenance of democracy and the rule of law in the UK, and implied that it maintained these foundations of freedom in all its member states.
If only that were true.