© REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

Eastern Europe is a region more internally divided than any other part of the continent. It is homogeneous only in ethnic terms—its population is almost entirely white (apart from some Roma populations in some countries), which makes it rather exceptional and ill-suited to the realities of a globalized world.

When modern national identities were emerging, most of today’s Eastern European countries were not even on the map. Their most prominent nationals were citizens of other countries, and their broader populations were generally poorly educated and politically disenfranchised. The common experience that ultimately united Czechs, Poles, Romanians, and Hungarians was communism.

The 19th-century experience of struggles for independence has made Eastern European countries more nationalistic and more sensitive to issues of sovereignty, while the experience of communism (which was often more nationalist than leftist) has discredited the political left. The legacy of communism is that the region is poorer, more backward, more corrupt, and cut off from immigration.

Eastern European countries also differ from their Western neighbors in terms of their economic model. They lack the experience of the postwar welfare state. Meanwhile, the fall of communism came at the height of faith in neoliberalism, which is why the capitalism that was introduced in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary (as well as Russia) is far more neoliberal that its equivalent in Germany, France, or Italy.

The Narcissism of Small Differences

All of these factors serve to differentiate Eastern Europe from the West and underlie its classification as one cultural-political region. But this is a region dominated by the narcissism of small differences, where no country wants to be compared to the others because they all aspire to join the West. Every country in the region suffers from the complexes of backward and aspiring countries, meaning that they are all constantly competing with each other in an attempt to prove they are better than their neighbors.

For example, the Poles look down on the Czechs for not having fought hard enough for their country, while the Czechs disdain the Poles for constantly engaging in battles that cannot be won. The Poles see their country as the region’s natural leader because it is larger and more populous. But no one else sees Poland in that role. The Czechs see themselves as the most modern and most Western nation in the region. Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltics are in the eurozone. The Hungarians, meanwhile, are the only ones in the region who have international ambitions: Viktor Orbán wants to be the leader of Europe’s populist right. Jarosław Kaczyński wants Europe to leave him alone, but he joins Orbán in his campaigns from time to time.

Eastern European societies know much less about each other than they do about Germany or Austria. Language, religion, culture—there is much more that divides us than unites us. This is true even for the historic incorporation into empires. The territories of today’s Poland belonged to three empires at various times, which is still evident in railway and road infrastructure, and even in voting patterns.

Monastery, Mob, or Madhouse

The common experiences of 19th-century nationalism and 20th-century communism make the region far more populist than Western Europe. But the region’s internal differences also mean that it is home to entirely different brands of populism.

Poland’s populism is ideological, while the Czech Republic’s resembles the iconic Czech literary character Josef Švejk in that it is half-witted and bumbling, and therefore less threatening. Hungary, meanwhile, has gangster populism. Poland’s ruling party, the Law and Justice Party (PiS), is like a monastery, Hungary’s Fidesz is like the mob, and Andrej Babiš’s ANO is like a madhouse. The populism of Slovakia’s former prime minister, Robert Fico, does not resemble anything—it is an invisible populism, although it involves the rather surreal element of cooperation with the Italian mafia. Fico’s invisible populism has proven the least populist, and fostered economic growth in Slovakia. On the other hand, it has also proved the most murderous—only Slovakia has experienced the killing of a journalist, most likely with the involvement of businessmen cooperating with government authorities.

As political scientists Martin Eiermann, Yascha Mounk, and Limor Gultchin of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have shown, only in Europe’s post-communist east do populists routinely beat traditional parties in elections. Of 15 Eastern European countries, populist parties currently hold power in seven, are part of a ruling coalition in two more, and are the main opposition force in three.

Eiermann, Mounk, and Gultchin also point out that whereas populist parties captured 20 percent or more of the vote in only two Eastern European countries in 2000, today they have done so in 10 countries. In Poland, populist parties have gone from winning a mere 0.1 percent of the vote in 2000 to the current PiS government winning two consecutive parliamentary majorities. And in Hungary, support for Prime Minister Orbán’s Fidesz party has at times exceeded 70 percent.

Liberalism Is a Western Import

Hard data aside, we need to consider the underlying social and political factors that have made populism so much stronger in Eastern Europe. For starters, Eastern Europe lacks the tradition of checks and balances that has long safeguarded Western democracy. Unlike Poland’s de facto ruler, PiS chairman Kaczyński, Donald Trump does not ignore judicial decisions (so far, at least).

Or consider Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. Mueller was appointed by US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a government official who is subordinate to Trump within the executive branch. But while Trump has the authority to fire Mueller or Rosenstein, he didn’t dare to do so. The same cannot be said for Kaczyński.

Another major difference is that Eastern Europeans tend to hold more materialist attitudes than Westerners, who have moved beyond concerns about physical security to embrace what sociologist Ronald Inglehart calls post-materialist values. One aspect of this difference is that Eastern European societies are more vulnerable to attacks on abstract liberal institutions such as freedom of speech and judicial independence.

This shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, liberalism in Eastern Europe is a Western import. Notwithstanding the Trump and Brexit phenomena, the United States and the United Kingdom have deeply embedded cultures of political and social liberalism. In Eastern Europe, civil society is not just weaker; it is also more focused on areas such as charity, religion, and leisure, rather than political issues.

Attractive for Losers and Winners

Moreover, in the vastly different political landscapes of Europe’s post-communist states, the left is either very weak or completely absent from the political mainstream. The political dividing line, then, is not between left and right, but between right and wrong. As a result, Eastern Europe is much more prone to the “friend or foe” dichotomy conceived by the anti-liberal German political and legal theorist Carl Schmitt. Each side conceives of itself as the only real representative of the nation and treats its opponents as illegitimate alternatives who should be disenfranchised, not merely defeated.

Another major difference between Eastern and Western European populists is that the former can count on support not only from the working class, but also from the middle class. According to research conducted by Maciej Gdula published in Krytyka Polityczna, political attitudes in Poland do not align with whether one benefited or lost out during the country’s post-communist economic transformation. The ruling party’s electorate includes many who are generally satisfied with their lives, and are benefitting from the country’s development.

For such voters, the appeal of the populist message lies in its provision of an overarching narrative in which to organize positive and negative experiences. This creates a sense of purpose, as it ties voters more strongly to the party. Voters do not develop their own opinions about the courts, refugees, or the opposition based on their own experiences. Instead, they listen to the leader, adjusting their views according to their political choices.

The success of the PiS, therefore, is rooted not in frustrated voters’ economic interests. For the working class, the desire for a sense of community is the major consideration. For their middle-class counterparts, it is the satisfaction that arises not from material wealth, but from pointing to someone who is perceived as inferior, from refugees to depraved elites to cliquish judges. Orbán and Kaczyński are experts in capitalizing on this longing.

Dissimilar Twins

Stalin, in the first decade of Soviet power, backed the idea of “socialism in one country,” meaning that, until conditions ripened, socialism was for the USSR alone. When Orbán declared, in July 2014, his intention to build an “illiberal democracy,” it was widely assumed that he was creating “illiberalism in one country.” Now, Orbán and Kaczyński have proclaimed a counter-revolution aimed at turning the European Union into an illiberal project.

After a day of grinning, backslapping bonhomie at the 2018 Krynica conference, which styles itself a regional Davos (Orbán was named its Man of the Year), Kaczyński and Orbán announced that they would lead 100 million Europeans in a bid to remake the EU along nationalist/religious lines. One might imagine Václav Havel, a previous honoree, turning in his grave at the pronouncement. And former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, another previous winner, must be aghast: her country is being ravaged by Russia under President Vladimir Putin, the pope of illiberalism and role model for Kaczyński and Orbán.

The two men intend to seize the opportunity presented by the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum, which demonstrated that, in today’s EU, illiberal democrats’ preferred mode of discourse—lies and smears—can be politically and professionally rewarding. The fusion of the two men’s skills could make them a more potent threat than many Europeans may realize.

What Orbán brings to the partnership is clear: a strain of “pragmatic” populism. He has aligned his Fidesz party with the European People’s Party (the group in the European Parliament that brings together conventional, center-right parties including Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU), which keeps him formally within the political mainstream and makes the German chancellor an ally who provides political protection, despite Orbán’s illiberal governance. Kaczyński, however, chose to ally the PiS with the marginal Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, and he quarrels almost ceaselessly with Germany and the European Commission.

Cynic vs. Fanatic

Moreover, Orbán has more of the common touch than his Polish partner. Like Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who has served as President of the European Council since 2014 (and whose tenure is about to end), he plays soccer with other politicians. Kaczyński, by contrast, is something of a hermit, who lives alone and spends his evenings watching Spanish rodeo on TV. He seems to live outside of society, whereas his supporters seem to place him above it—the ascetic messiah of a Poland reborn.

It is this mystical fervor that Kaczyński brings to his partnership with the opportunistic Orbán. It is a messianism forged from Polish history—a sense that the nation has a special mission for which God has chosen it, with the proof to be found in Poland’s especially tragic history. Uprisings, war, partitions: these are the things a Pole should think about every day.

A messianic identity favors a certain type of leader—one who, like Putin, appears to be animated by a sense of mission (in Putin’s case, it is the same mission proclaimed by the czars: orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality). So, whereas Orbán is a cynic, Kaczyński is a fanatic for whom pragmatism is a sign of weakness. Orbán would never act against his own interests; Kaczyński has done so many times. By attacking members of his own coalition government, for example, Kaczyński lost power in 2007, only two years after he had won it. He seems to have no plans. Instead, he has visions—not of fiscal reform or economic restructuring, but of a new type of Poland.

Orbán seeks nothing of the kind. He doesn’t want to create a new-model Hungary; his only aim is to remain, like Putin, in power for the rest of his life. Having governed as a liberal in the 1990s (paving the way for Hungary to join both NATO and the EU) and lost, Orbán regards illiberalism as the means to win until he takes his last breath.

Different Motives, Identical Methods

Kaczyński’s illiberalism is of the soul. He calls those outside his camp “the worst sort of Poles.” Homo Kaczynskius is a Pole preoccupied with his country’s fate, and who bares his teeth at critics and dissenters, particularly foreign ones. Gays and lesbians cannot be true Poles. All non-Polish elements within Poland are viewed as a threat. The PiS government has not accepted a single refugee of the tiny number—just 7,500—that Poland, a country of nearly 40 million, agreed with the EU to take in.

Despite having different motivations for embracing illiberalism, Kaczyński and Orbán agree that, in practical terms, it means building a new national culture. State-funded media are no longer public, but rather “national.” By eliminating civil-service exams, offices can be filled with loyalists and party hacks. The education system is being turned into a vehicle for fostering identification with a glorious and tragic past. Only cultural enterprises that praise the nation should receive public funding.

For Kaczyński, foreign policy is a function of historical policy. Here, the two men do differ: whereas Orbán’s pragmatism keeps him from antagonizing his European and US partners excessively, Kaczyński is uninterested in geopolitical calculation. After all, a messiah does not trim his beliefs or kowtow; he lives to proclaim the truth.

So, for the most part, Kaczyński’s foreign policy is a tendentious history seminar. Poland was betrayed by the West. Its strength—today and always—comes from pride, dignity, courage, and absolute self-reliance. Its defeats are moral victories that prove the nation’s strength and courage, enabling it, like Christ, to return from the dead after 123 years of absence from the map of Europe.

The Four Lessons of Populist Rule

The conventional view of populism posits that an erratic ruler will enact contradictory policies that primarily benefit the rich. The poor will lose, because populists have no hope of restoring manufacturing jobs, despite their promises. And massive inflows of migrants and refugees will continue, because populists have no plan to address the problem’s root causes. In the end, populist governments, incapable of effective rule, will crumble and their leaders will either face impeachment or fail to win re-election.

Kaczyński faced similar expectations. Liberal Poles thought that he would work for the benefit of the rich, create chaos, and quickly trip himself up—which is exactly what happened between 2005 and 2007, when PiS last governed Poland. But the liberals were wrong: PiS has transformed itself from an ideological nullity into a party that has managed to introduce shocking changes with record speed and efficiency. In fact, recent years have brought us four lessons about what makes populist rule more durable.

First, no neoliberalism. Between 2005 and 2007, PiS implemented neoliberal economic policies (for example, eliminating the highest income-tax bracket and the estate tax). But since returning to power in 2015, it has enacted the largest social transfers in Poland’s contemporary history. Parents now receive a 500 złoty ($120) monthly benefit for every child. As a direct result, the poverty rate has declined by 20 to 40 percent, and by 70 to 90 percent among children. And that’s just the most discussed example. In 2016, the government introduced free medication for people over the age of 75. The retirement age has been reduced from 67 for both men and women to 60 for women and 65 for men. The government is also planning tax relief for low-income taxpayers.

The 500 złoty child subsidy has changed the political paradigm in Poland. Now, no electoral promise that is not formulated as a direct offer of cash can have any hope of appealing to voters. PiS won big in the European elections in May 2019 thanks to its promise of paying out a 13th month of retirement benefits, which was enacted a week before voters went to the polls. In the campaign ahead of the Polish parliamentary elections in October 2019 the party ran on a promise of almost doubling the minimum salary (from 2250 złoty in 2019 to 3000 złoty in 2020 and 4000 złoty in 2023).

Second, the restoration of “order.” Independent institutions are the most important enemy of populism. Populist leaders are control freaks. For populists, it is liberal democracy that leads to chaos, which must be “put in order” by a “responsible government.” Media pluralism leads to informational chaos. An independent judiciary means legal chaos. Independent public administration creates institutional chaos. And a robust civil society is a recipe for chronic bickering and conflict.

But populists believe that such chaos does not emerge by itself. It is the work of perfidious foreign powers and their domestic puppets. To “make Poland great again,” the nation’s heroes must defeat its traitors, who are not equal contenders for power. Populist leaders are thus obliged to limit their opponents’ rights. Indeed, their political ideal is not order, but rather the subordination of all independent bases of power that could challenge them: courts, media, business, cultural institutions, NGOs, and so forth.

Third, electoral dictatorship. Populists know how to win elections, but their conception of democracy extends no further. On the contrary, populists view the separation of government powers, minority rights, and independent media—all staples of liberalism—as an attack on majority rule, and therefore on democracy itself.

The political ideal that a populist government strives for is essentially an elected dictatorship. And recent US experience suggests that this can be a sustainable model. After all, everything depends on how those in power decide to organize elections, which can include redrawing voting districts or altering the rules governing campaign finance or political advertisements. Elections can be falsified imperceptibly.

Fourth, might makes right. Populists have benefited from disseminating fake news, slandering their opponents, and promising miracles that mainstream media treat as normal campaign claims. But it is a mistake to think that truth is an effective weapon against post-truth. In a post-truth world, it is power, not fact-checking, that is decisive. Whoever is most ruthless and has the fewest scruples wins.

To Defeat Populism, Be Ruthless

Populists are both unseemly and ascendant. Trump’s supporters, for example, have come to view tawdriness as evidence of credibility, whereas comity, truth, and reason are evidence of elitism. Those who would resist populism must come to terms with the fact that truth is not enough. They must also display determination and ruthlessness, though without becoming the mirror image of their opponents.

In postmodernity, nationalism does not disappear into thin air. Unfortunately, in Poland and elsewhere, the only ideology that has survived in the post-ideological era is nationalism. By appealing to nationalist sentiment, populists have gained support everywhere, regardless of the economic system or situation, because this sentiment is being fueled externally, namely by the influx of migrants and refugees. It does not have to be real; imagined dangers also work well. Polish anti-Semitism does not need Jews, anti-communism works without communists. Another good example are anti-migration feelings, which can be whipped up without a single migrant or refugee around.

Mainstream politicians, especially on the left, have no effective message on the issue. Opposing migration contradicts their ideals, while supporting it means electoral defeat.

But the choice should be clear. Either populism’s opponents drastically change their rhetoric regarding migrants and refugees, or the populists will continue to rule in Eastern Europe. Migrants and refugees lose in either scenario, but in the second, liberal democracy does as well. Such calculations are ugly—and, yes, corrosive of liberal values—but the populists, as we have seen, are capable of far nastier trade-offs.

Kaczyński had succeeded in establishing control over two issues near and dear to voters: social transfers and nationalism. As long as he controls these two bastions of voter sentiment, he is safe.

The post Eastern Differences appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

After a traumatic two months of fighting between the European Union’s institutions and political groups, it all came to an end last night. The European Parliament voted to confirm German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen as the next President of the European Commission – but by a margin of just nine votes.

The result was uncertain right until the last moment, with MEPs across the political spectrum still angry that the prime ministers of the European Council had ignored the Spitzenkandidat system of injecting democracy by running presidential candidates in the EU election. The national leaders chose non-candidate Von der Leyen at a marathon Brussels summit two weeks ago. The center-left Socialists & Democrats group was particularly angry because their Spitzenkandidat, Frans Timmermans, was rejected by a coalition of right-wing and center-right EU leaders.

So when the S&D announced two hours before the vote that it was joining the center-right EPP and the Liberal Renew Europe in endorsing her, it was assumed she would pass by a healthy majority. But this was a secret ballot, and things did not go as planned.

A sizable number of MEPs in those three centrist groups – the three largest in the Parliament with 443 sets between them – must have voted against her. Because she ended up with just 383 votes.

Right-Wing Support

Worst still, the pre-announced voting intentions of populist parties not in those groups means the number of pro-European centrists that voted for her was even lower still. The 14 MEPs in Italy’s governing Five Star Movement, 26 MEPs in Poland’s governing Law and Justice, and 13 MEPs in Hungary’s governing Fidesz all said they voted for her.

The reason is that their three prime ministers had supported her nomination at the European Council Summit, after fiercely opposing the nomination of Timmermans, who as Commission Vice President has opened punishment procedures against Poland and Hungary for rule of law violations. Following that summit, Orban bragged in Hungary that he and his illiberal allies had “won” the summit by blocking Timmermans and choosing Von der Leyen.

That Europe’s right-wing populist forces were rooting for Von der Leyen may seem odd, given she is an avowed federalist who wants to see a “United States of Europe” and ever-closer union. Indeed, on paper there is little for them to like about her. During her speech to the Parliament yesterday she said she would continue the Commission’s efforts to go after those EU countries where the rule of law violations are occurring, though she would not mention Poland and Hungary by name.

And yet, she will know that she owes her Commission presidency to the governing parties of Poland and Hungary – not just for her appointment in the Council, but also for her confirmation in the Parliament.

Asked about that uncomfortable reality in a press conference following her confirmation vote, she did not confront the implications head on.

“I don’t know who voted for me,” she told journalists. “I know it was very difficult to achieve a majority. But I think today the most important question was giving a speech which reflected my convictions, a pro-European speech, but one in which there was an attempt to find a solution to the divisions that exist between West and East.”

“A majority’s a majority in politics,” she added. “I didn’t have a majority when I came here two weeks ago, people didn’t know me. And as I can understand, there’s a great deal of resentment surrounding the Spitzenkandidat process.”

But the result gives credence to an idea put forward by the Greens, fresh off an election victory in May, that Von der Leyen will owe her commission presidency to the right-wing populists. Orban himself is likely to trumpet the parliament vote result in Hungary as another win for his party, as he did after the Council summit. Whether or not the Commission president actually feels beholden to him, the impression will be there.

Von Der Leyen’s backers were at pains last night to stress that the historic opposition to her in the Parliament was not about her as a politician but rather about the process in which she was appointed – something for which she bears no guilt. On this, they are correct. Indeed, some of the MEPs who voted against her said as they were leaving the chamber that despite their vote, they liked her very much. It was about the principle of defending the integrity of the European Parliament, which the Council had insulted by ignoring the Spitzenkandidaten.

Spitzenkandidat No More

One thing that everyone could agree on last night was that they were glad the ordeal is over. But the Parliament has emerged badly weakened. And in an act of revenge, they have weakened Von der Leyen as she starts her term.

One thing is clear – the Spitzenkandidat system for allowing voters a say in choosing the Commission President is dead.

Von der Leyen has promised the Parliament she will work to develop a new system for democratically selecting the Commission president in time for the next EU election in 2024. She said it will incorporate transnational lists, something pushed for by French President Emmanuel Macron but rejected by her center-right EPP Group in a European Parliament vote last year.

In the end, it will not be her decision to make. That will be up to the 28 national leaders of the EU, who under the treaties retain the sole right to nominate a Commission President. They never signed up to the Spitzenkandidat system; it was an invention of the European Parliament that wasn’t grounded in law. But they gave in to pressure in following it the first time it was used in 2014, to appoint EPP candidate Jean-Claude Juncker.

With Macron strongly opposed to the system this time around, the Parliament and Council never reached an agreement before the election on whether to use it. The Parliament decided to go ahead and run it anyway, thinking they could pressure the Council again as they did in 2014. It didn’t work out that way, and the failure of communication between EU institutions resulted in the ugly process that has played out over the past two months.

Now, the EU has a Commission president who is starting to look less like a compromise candidate and more like a compromised candidate. The Parliament has been left humiliated and angry, while the Commission has been left with a leader who risks being seen as illegitimate. In time, Von der Leyen’s historically narrow confirmation may become but a distant memory. But for now, it has exposed some of the EU’s worst decision-making flaws at a time when it can least afford such a blow to its reputation.

The post Von der Leyen’s in and the Spitzenkandidat’s Dead appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán does not like to talk to the independent press, preferring more managed media appearances. However, in November 2018, followers of his Facebook page were made privy to a video he made with the action star Chuck Norris. “I’m a streetfighter basically,” said Orbán, as he drove by Budapest’s Heroes’ Square, the setting for his epochal “Russians go home” speech in 1989. “I’m not coming from the elite, I’m coming from a small village.”

Orbán’s PR was canny as ever. Norris is a cult figure in Hungary and the memory of Heroes’ Square is a gift that keeps on giving, even three decades on. But he was also showing a self-awareness that is not always apparent to Hungary observers. “Orbán loves to fight,” his biographer Paul Lendvai told the Berlin Policy Journal. His Fidesz party and Orbán project themselves as the only real genuine fighters for the national interest, for Christian values, against the barbarian invasion,” Lendvai added.

The Viktor Orbán story is one of ambition and opportunism. It began with opportunism, too. It began in 1989 with a speech that Orbán made to some 250,000 people at the symbolic reburial of Imre Nagy, the martyr of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Orbán decried the Soviet Union and called for the withdrawal from Hungary of Soviet troops. It was an opportunistic move—the speakers that day had allegedly agreed to demur on the topic of Russia’s departure—but with it, he entered the history books. As one of his biographers Jozsef Debreczeni described it, “it was the meeting of an extraordinary luck with an extraordinary talent.”

Orbán has been a legacy politician from the start, even though a video from around that time shows him denying any interest in a political career, saying he would rather be a professor. Yet one of his university teachers has recalled having to break the news to a young, crestfallen Orbán that he would never fulfil his ambition to become US president, because he was not born in the country. His years in liberal circles left Orbán with a bitterness from being mocked by Budapest’s intellectuals. But if he was outclassed on an academic level, his political instincts have helped him prevail.

“He Has Become Illiberal”

Given his current dominance of Hungary’s political landscape, it is easy to forget that Orbán failed to gain an outright majority in Hungary during the first 20 years. However, since 2010 he has won three supermajorities that have allowed him to rewrite and amend the constitution at will. After three decades in politics—Orbán, now 55, has been at Hungary’s top table since he was 26—voters want him because of his personality.  That’s how the one genuine pretender to his crown, János Lázár, a leading member of Fidesz, has described Orbán’s enduring success.

According to political scientist and researcher Zoltán Gábor Szűcs, “Orbán is smart, self-reflective (but not a philosopher), aggressive, manipulative. I’m not sure if he knows that people are not just his means and instruments,” he added. Orbán always wants to win and he’s simply unable to play by the book. Through all the ideological about-turns—since 1989 Orbán has changed his stance on liberalism, the clergy, Russia, and Europe—it is relentless ambition that has been the common thread that runs through his career. What motivates him is “winning, crushing his rivals,” said Szűcs. “He is always pushing the boundaries. Usually it works for him. During his first term (from 1998-2002) he was much less relevant than now. It was a different time, a different Europe, and Hungary was not in the EU,” Szűcs added.

Orbán’s early academic ambitions are still manifest in his willingness to meet star intellectuals. The latest academic to receive an audience with Orbán was French liberal philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who said after a coffee with him this month that he had “deciphered Orbán’s secret.” Lévy recalled that he met Orbán 30 years ago as a member of President François Mitterrand’s delegation.  “Orbán was completely different. A liberal, anti-totalitarian person,” Lévy said. “He has become indeed illiberal.”

Razor-Wire For the Borders

Since 2015, Orbán has made immigration a signature issue. He has called migrants “a poison,” and has said that “Hungary does not need a single migrant for the economy to work, or the population to sustain itself, or for the country to have a future.” However according to Szűcs, the rise of Orbán on a European level was as much down to the lack of reactions of his political opponents, as the speed with which Orbán himself acted.

“He was incredibly cynical and also extremely lucky that neither his opposition nor the EU were able to take advantage of his shocking mismanagement of the migration crisis. It was a total failure, a complete meltdown of the Hungarian administration,” Szűcs said.

“For months they were paralyzed. But still the opposition missed this unique opportunity just like the EU did. Ever since then the migration issue pays off for him way more than he could have reasonably expected when he started this whole gamble.”

So, while Orbán built razor-wire fences along Hungary’s southern borders with Serbia and Croatia, an inactive EU allowed him to set the agenda, which Orbán will seek to profit from in the European Parliament elections at the end of May.

In a Favorable Position

Orbán’s turn to the right has seen Fidesz suspended from the major center-right group in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party. It remains to be seen whether the party will make amends with its EPP allies or seek other alliances after the European elections in May.

Europe is increasingly important to him. “He is not endangered on the home front. He plays it by ear; that is, if the radical right from Matteo Salvini to Marine Le Pen and Austria’s FPÖ is strengthened, he is in a very favorable position,” said biographer Lendvai. Fidesz will then likely forge an alliance with those who think similarly to the Hungarian governing party, and fight for a ‘Europe of nations,’” he added.

“I guess his most optimistic scenario is that the status quo will end for good and he can profit from the subsequent chaos,” Szűcs said. “Maybe he can strengthen his position in the EPP, maybe he can find new friends. Perhaps his worst-case scenario is that the EPP won’t need him anymore. Anyway, as long as his position in Hungary is stable, he has plenty of time to wait for the next opportunity.”

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© REUTERS/ Eva Plevier

The European center-right took on a troublemaker in its own ranks on Wednesday when the European People’s Party (EPP) indefinitely suspended Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s populist Fidesz party. Fidesz will lose its voting rights within the EPP and its ability to put forward candidates for party positions.

In an effort to show that the EU’s largest political family can rein in its own extremes, Orbán’s party was put on notice—and expulsion after the European elections in May remains an option. But by not kicking out Orbán’s party, the EPP avoided, for now, giving a boost to the populist and anti-migration forces in Europe that are expected to do well at the ballot boxes. And Orbán has been able to spin to the ruling to show that he is still in control, calling the compromise a “good decision” and noting that the motion says Fidesz and the EPP “jointly” agreed on it.

In a heated three-hour debate among the around 260 national party delegates in Brussels on Wednesday, even Orbán’s closest allies within EPP supported a compromise decision to suspend Fidesz indefinitely. EPP members had gradually grown frustrated with Orbán, who has eroded democratic freedoms and the rule of law back home while criticizing EPP leaders for being weak and supporting migration. In his latest stunt, which propelled the EPP into action, Orbán oversaw a campaign against EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, a fellow EPP member and Orbán critic. In recent weeks, thirteen national parties have called for Fidesz to be expelled from the EPP.

The EPP and Fidesz agreed on an “evaluation committee” led by former EU council chief Herman Van Rompuy and including former Austrian prime minister Wolfgang Schuessel. They are tasked with determining whether Fidesz respects the rule of law and adheres to conditions set out by the EPP’s lead candidate in the European elections, Manfred Weber. The conditions include ending the anti-Juncker campaign and allowing the Central European University, a prestigious school founded by US billionaire George Soros and targeted by Orbán, to remain in Budapest. (Schuessel was himself rebuffed by the EU in 2000 for forming a government coalition with the far-right Freedom party, with a three-member team scrutinizing his decision.)

A Punishment or a Reprieve? 

But the EPP allowed Orbán to turn the suspension into a victory march. The wording of the document adopted by 190 members of the EPP’s political assembly lets Fidesz argue to his voters that, in fact, it decided to suspend itself. “We cannot be expelled, and we cannot be suspended,” Orbán told reporters after the meeting. Earlier in the day, Orbán had threatened to pull his party from EPP if it was suspended unilaterally, giving him leverage in negotiating his own punishment.

Back in Hungary, the network of pro-government media promoted Orbán’s interpretations of events as a victory. “No expulsion, no suspension,” was the headline of the news website Origo. “The pro-migration action has failed, they could not push Fidesz out,” was the title of another story. The public broadcaster has called EPP’s punishment a “huge victory”.

Orbán announced at his press conference that he is also setting up a three-member group with MEP Jozsef Szajer, EU State Minister Judit Vajda, and Katalin Novak, the state secretary for family issues, to report back after the elections on the issue of whether Fidesz should remain in the EPP. The team would be negotiating with the Van Rompuy group, Orbán said, although the EPP’s internal document on the decision mentions no need for negotiations. In Orbán’s world, it is Fidesz that decided to suspend its membership to assess whether EPP is true to its Christian democratic values. Orbán even told reporters: “We never had any campaign against Juncker,” giving an insight into the absurdity of the Hungarian government’s propaganda.

“Thirteen parties wanted to push the right wing of the party out,” Orbán said at the presser, arguing that it was thanks to his negotiations and willingness to compromise that party unity was preserved. “I hope we can lead a united campaign, and liberal ideas will not dominate the party, but it will be a balanced party family with Christian conservatives inside it,” he added.

Eyeing the Commission Presidency

Weber, who hails from the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) party, was keen to put the “Orbán problem” behind him as his campaign picks up for the EU commission presidency. The EPP camp is now trying to shift the harsh spotlight onto its rivals, arguing that the Socialists need to rein in their Romanian member party, the ruling Social Democrats, who have curbed judicial independence in Bucharest, and that the Liberals need to scrutinize their Czech member which has been dogged by corruption.

How did Orbán escape expulsion? He had threatened last year that he could easily set up an anti-migration political alliance outside of the EPP with like-minded parties, and his EPP colleagues took notice. There was real concern in the EPP that expelling Fidesz now could not only send the wrong message about party unity in the middle of the European campaign, but could also give a boost to populist, anti-migration parties in the run up to the vote.

Orbán has openly hinted at setting up a new party with Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), which is also shunned by the EU for putting the judiciary under political control. Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini, whose anti-migration League party is expected to be the second biggest national party in the next European Parliament, has also reached out to PiS and praised Orbán.

The compromise allows both Orbán and the EPP to await the final results of the European elections and rethink their strategy. Fidesz MEPs will continue to be allowed to sit with the EPP in the European Parliament for the few remaining sessions in this term. As the EPP is expected to lose dozens of MEPs in the next elections, Fidesz MEPs could provide useful support in the future for Weber’s quest to find a majority that supports his bid for the commission presidency. 

By sidelining Orbán, Weber also aims convince the other EU leaders—whose backing he needs for the commission top job—that he can rein in the populists. Indeed, Weber wanted to demonstrate to his potential allies that Orbán will not push the EPP to the right, and Hungary’s self-described “illiberal” leader cannot set the agenda for the entire party. “Fidesz will have no say any more on the EPP’s political approach,” Weber told reporters after the meeting.

However, critics—even within his own party—say Weber is not tough enough and the suspension only kicks the issue of dealing with Orbán further down the road. “Shameless move by Manfred Weber: a suspension just in time for the European elections, after nine years of attacks on rule of law by Orbán, and an evaluation in the fall, just before knowing if he needs Orbán’s votes to get the European Commission presidency,” former Green MEP Rui Tavares said in reaction to EPP’s rebuke. Tavares’s 2013 report in the European Parliament already warned about Orbán’s rolling back of democratic freedoms.

Despite Weber’s efforts, the questions persist: who is in charge of the EPP, and is the tail wagging the dog? 

The post Orbán on the Naughty Step appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

When center-right EU presidential nominee Manfred Weber came to Budapest on Tuesday to meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, it wasn’t for a friendly chat.

Both men are members of the European People’s Party (EPP), a collection of mainstream conservative parties from across Europe. But in recent years and months, Orbán has been acting as an enfant terrible within the family. He has given speeches attacking the EPP for being too moderate, championing what he has called “illiberal democracy” and warning that Angela Merkel’s refugee policy will lead to the end of Christian Europe.

Orbán has forged increasingly close bonds with Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and Italy’s Lega, the former strongly conservative-nationalist and the latter on the far-right; both are not part of the EPP. There has been speculation for some while that he would leave the EPP to form a new far-right group with them.

Fearful of sparking a grand political realignment of Europe’s right, which has dominated European politics for over a decade, the EPP has kept relatively quiet. Until now.

Last month Orbán launched an ad campaign in Hungary attacking European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who is also a member of the EPP. The posters, ahead of the campaign for the European election taking place in May, seemed to be running against the EPP rather than with it. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Juncker launched a furious rebuttal to Orbán in response to the ads, and now a dozen parties within the EPP have tabled a motion to expel Orbán’s Fidesz party at their congress on March 20. The Hungarian prime minister seems to be willing to row back just enough to defeat the vote—but is it too little, too late?

Weber to the Rescue

Up till now, Manfred Weber has been trying to act as the peacemaker between the warring factions of the EPP. He has been close with Orbán in the past and some have even called him the “Orbán whisperer” for his efforts to translate the nationalistic rhetoric of the Hungarian leader into softer-sounding words for his EPP colleagues.

But the anti-Juncker campaign spurred Weber to drop his defense. He called it “unacceptable,” and said “one cannot belong to the EPP and campaign against the current EPP commission president.”

He travelled to Budapest hoping to extract concessions from Orbán that will avoid a vote to expel him next week. But the result was unconvincing.

“Today in my talks with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán we had a constructive atmosphere, but problems are not yet solved,” Weber told reporters at a press conference following the meeting. “We have to still assess and discuss among the EPP party members, about the upcoming decisions.”

Weber said that Orbán had promised him his anti-Juncker poster campaign would end. Indeed, the billboards between the airport and the parliament—the route Weber took to get to the meeting—had already been covered up. But posters elsewhere in the city are still up, as are the online ads on Hungarian websites.

Weber said this isn’t just about the posters, it is about broader issues. “What we want to guarantee is that Fidesz is committed to the EPP values, and Hungary is a clear pro-European country which sticks to the European values,” he said.

To underline just how much Orbán seems to be threatening those values, Weber held his press conference in a historic synagogue in Budapest. The Hungarian prime minister and his Fidesz party have been accused of demonizing Hungary’s Jewish community, most notably the Hungarian-born US financier George Soros who has been depicted alongside Juncker in the ads.

Splintering the EP’s Juggernaut

The EPP holds the most seats in the European Council and European Parliament, making it the most powerful political family in the EU by far. The long decline of the center-left Socialists and Democrats group has left the EPP as the undisputed leader in the era of Angela Merkel.

Given that it’s so large, one might ask what would be the big deal in losing Fidesz’s 12 MEPs? The fear is that more EPP parties would follow Orbán out the door into his new group, which could then pose a real threat. In other words, better to have Orbán in the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.

Orbán has well understood the EPP’s fears, and it has given him a feeling of invincibility. But this week, the resolution to expel Fidesz seems to have spooked him. Orbán’s chief of staff told Reuters last week that the party would ditch the billboards and is ready to apologize if any offence was caused. And though members of his party have been calling for Fidesz to leave the EPP and unite with the Poles and Italians, Orbán has been publicly urging restraint.

However these minor peace offerings might not be enough to save him. The math for next week’s EPP vote is not looking good. At least twelve of the EPP’s 56 parties plan to vote to expel, a list that reportedly includes Greece’s New Democracy, Finland’s Kokoomus, Belgium’s CdH and CD&V, and Sweden’s Christian Democrats.

Whether or not Orbán’s party is expelled will depend on what the big center-right parties decide to do, namely Germany’s CDU/CSU, France’s Les Républicains, Spain’s People’s Party, and Italy’s Forza Italia.

It may be that Orbán’s fate lies in the hands of his long-time enemy Angela Merkel. But the German Chancellor is known as being a cautious and shrewd politician, and she will not tell her delegates to vote to expel Orbán simply because of her personal dislike for him. With the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) putting pressure on her own party, she will be wary of doing anything that will bolster the far-right ahead of the European Parliament election, or during the crucial group formation period between May and July.

Out by the End of the Year?

For this reason, the most likely outcome of next week’s vote will be to allow Fidesz to remain in the EPP. There is a widespread belief that Orbán is actually trying to get the EPP to expel him, to feed a persecution narrative common among Europe’s far-right. If he can claim that Europe’s elites are trying to silence him, it could only make him grow stronger.

And so for the moment, the EPP is likely to prefer to have Orbán inside the tent rather than outside it. But given recent events, it seems unlikely his party will remain in the group by the end of the year. The EPP may just wait until after the new European Parliament has been formed and the political groupings within it have been decided.

In the meantime, however, this procrastination will benefit Europe’s center-left, Liberals, and Greens during the European election campaign. All three—especially the liberals—will point to Orbán’s continued presence in the EPP as evidence of their lack of courage, conviction, and values. We’ll find out at the end of May whether European voters took notice.

The post The Orbán Showdown appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

For months, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been walking right up to the line of seceding from his center-right EU political group, the European Peoples Party (EPP). This week, he made an unprecedented attack on EPP group leaders, seeming to openly dare them to expel him.

On Monday, Orbán’s hard-right Fidesz party, which governs Hungary as a virtual one-party state, launched a taxpayer-funded campaign attacking the European Union and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker specifically.

The government’s official Facebook page shared an image of Juncker and Hungarian-American businessman George Soros saying, “you have the right to know what Brussels is preparing for!”. It accused Juncker of threatening Hungary’s security.

“They want to introduce mandatory resettlement quotas,” the post said. “They want to weaken member states’ rights to border protection. They would ease immigration with migrant visas”.

Juncker, who is a member of the same EPP group as Orbán, hit back the following day at a public event in Stuttgart. “Against lies there’s not much you can do,” he said. “There is no overlap at all between Orbán and myself…I believe his place is not in the European People’s Party.” Key EPP members in Berlin also turned up the pressure on the self-styled “illiberal democrat” from Budapest: CDU party leader Annegret-Kramp Karrenbauer said “it is up to the Hungarian side to prove it still feels a part of the EPP”, while CSU leader Markus Söder said Orbán was “going in the wrong direction”.

Back in Brussels, Joseph Daul, the EPP’s president, released a series of tweets defending Juncker and decrying the Hungarian government’s campaign. “Instead of casting Brussels as a ghost enemy, Hungary must realize it is a part of it.” However, he stopped short of calling for Orbán to be kicked out of the group.

New Far-Right Behemoth?

But EPP insiders say Budapest’s new campaign could be the last straw in the long-simmering tensions within the EPP–because the party’s highest-profile leader in Brussels is now openly calling for Fidesz to be kicked out.

Such a split would have huge implications for the upcoming European Parliament elections in May. The EPP has been at pains to avoid a fracture for fear that Orbán will start a new hard-right political group to rival the EPP, jeopardizing its strong majority in the Parliament and the European Council of the 28 national governments.

Such a hard-right group could lure other EPP parties, as well as current members of the Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group such as Poland’s Law and Justice party. The ECR, set up by the British Conservatives in 2009, seems likely to disband after Brexit. Italy’s Lega Nord and Five Star Movement, as well as far-right parties like France’s Rassemblement National, could also be tempted to join Orbán’s new group.

Such a realignment could create the most powerful far-right movement in Europe since World War II.

Orbán is angry because the EU has opened infringement proceedings against his government for rule-of-law violations.  He stands accused of having dismantled democratic institutions and freedom of the press in the country since his party took an unprecedented two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament in 2010. Here the Hungarian has something in common with Poland’s government, which is also facing EU investigations.

Following the European Parliament’s vote to open infringement proceedings, all eyes were on Orbán to see if we would leave the EPP, which until that time had protected him from EU scrutiny. However, Orbán chose to remain in the group at that time, though his continued presence caused tensions at the EPP party congress in November.

European election hangs in the balance

All of this will have clear implications for who becomes Juncker’s successor following the end of his term in the Autumn. The European political groups intend to once again turn to the spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) process, which was used for the first time in 2014 to elect Juncker. Under the system, each group nominates a lead candidate, and the candidate that can secure the most votes in the new European Parliament, which will take its seat in July, will become Commission President.

However, national governments are not keen on the idea, having only sleep-walked into it in 2014. There is intense doubt about whether one of the six lead candidates will actually become the next Commission President, even though the European Parliament has vowed that it will not approve anyone other than them. Instead, the governments are expected to nominate their own person and pressure the parliament to accept him or her.

In 2014, there was intense pressure on national leaders to accept Juncker, the spitzenkandidat for the EPP, as the president. The EPP had clearly won the European election, obtaining far more seats than the other parties. But though the EPP is again projected to ‘win’ the elections this year, it will likely be by a far lower margin. Losing Orbán and perhaps others would push them even lower, jeopardizing the chances of this year’s EPP spitzenkandidat, Manfred Weber, being approved by the Parliament and Council. A majority vote in both institutions is necessary to become president.

With the Liberal ALDE group gaining traction, in part thanks to the prospect of a partnership with French President Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche party, there is an increasing possibility of the EPP failing to come first in this year’s election. The Orbán decision may determine ALDE’s fate. Even though his Fidesz party does not have many MEPs, Orbán could bring other defecting EPP parties with him.

Juncker is well aware that Orbán was one of only two prime ministers to vote against him in 2014 – the other being Britain’s David Cameron. Orbán is now focusing his ire on Weber, his one-time defender turned critic. Weber came out strongly against Orbán on Friday, saying “I find some of the wording unacceptable. One cannot belong to the EPP and campaign against the current EPP Commission president.”

The task of keeping the EPP together will now fall on the party’s spitzenkandidat, and he must make a choice. Either Weber will heed the advice of Juncker and expel Fidesz from the group, or he will avoid the risk and try to placate Orbán over the next three months, postponing a decision about his party’s future until after the election. He will need to make a decision soon.

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© REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

The widespread assumption that good governance and high quality of democracy lead to better policy outcomes may hold true for many countries, but not for all. The 2018 report of the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) found that “all eastern European countries (…) achieve better political results than their governance quality would suggest.” In other words, despite democratic backsliding and political polarization, even countries like Hungary, Poland, and Romania receive better scores for policy outcomes than might be typical for countries with institutional and governance problems.

And the SGI report notifies another very important fact: Decreasing the quality of democracy does not immediately reduce citizens’ confidence in the government. The report concludes that “fundamental democratic values are not sufficiently anchored in the political consciousness of a considerable part of society.” A high level of trust in governments with poor rule-of-law scores is mainly observed in central and eastern European countries—and Turkey, which will be left aside here. But what are the root causes of this trust? It would be foolish to focus solely on governmental influence on media, state capture of the public sector, or disinformation campaigns—all of them have their impact, but the origins of this phenomenon have to be searched for in different places.

Own Way Is Best

While these countries are as different as their respective paths, there are a few common features. Firstly, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, and Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic have all questioned the transformation process of the 1990s. They have characterized the import of economic liberalism and some political attitudes (but not the whole process of democratization) as a failure, one which primarily served the interests of new political and economic elites and therefore must be undone or corrected. Such political messages understandably attracted a significant number of voters who lost out during the economic transformation process. It’s not an accident that two of these national-conservative and right-wing populist parties, Fidesz in Hungary and Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland, have strong support in economically underdeveloped and peripheral areas.

Secondly, some people still feel left behind despite the improvement of general economic performance since 1990.  In particular, the social policies of the 1990s and 2000s were perceived as underdeveloped by the public, and the new governments partly succeeded in filling this gap. For example, a study by the Polish Public opinion research center CBOS shows how the activities of the state toward the family were assessed over time: from mid 1990s until 2013, only around 10 percent of the respondents rated the state’s policy toward families as good or very good. But since the PiS government came to power and introduced a program of subsidies for families with two or more children, the public rating of government’s family policies rocketed. In 2016 and 2017, around 50 percent assessed it as good or very good, 35 percent as sufficient, and only 10 percent as poor. However, in other social policy areas, especially education, PiS hasn’t been as successful. Poles criticized the government’s education reform for overly centralizing control—they perceive the quality of education to be worse than before.

Thirdly, identity politics also plays an important role in maintaining support for the present governments. Political leaders have exploited the so-called refugee crisis in Europe to consolidate of their popularity. The depiction of refugees as a security threat became part of the political mainstream, and politicians like Slovakian Robert Fico, Orbán, or Babiš have spread the message that their firm attitude of “zero tolerance” would stop migration. Moreover, their political narrative also included islamophobia and bashing of the Western European countries for their policies of tolerance and solidarity. It has to be said that politicians and the vast majority of the public are on the same page in this regard.

Confronted with an East-West Divide

These leaders are aware of the great confidence they enjoy among citizens. They are also backed by good economic performance. Though nothing should be taken for granted in politics—the next general elections could change the current political course, at least in some countries like Poland and Slovakia—the growing self-confidence among the present central and eastern European leaders has implications for the EU.

More generous social policies make people feel that they are being seen and recognized. Moreover, assertive foreign policies create a distinction between the new governments and the previous political elites, who generally followed the western European (development) model.

Migration remains a key issue. The division between some central and eastern European countries on one side and EU institutions as well as some western European countries on the other side regarding compulsory relocation of asylum-seekers still resonates. Especially the Visegrád Group countries (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) see these liberal migration policies as a threat to their identities, for they believe that the “policies of multiculturalism” would ruin central European societies, value systems, and cultures—as has allegedly happened in western Europe.

Enlargement fatigue—the feeling in some member states, including France and Germany, that the major round of accessions in 2004 has weakened the EU—has transformed into the present East-West divide. The East, for its part, is presenting itself as a confident player, with leaders who are not connected with the liberal transformation and meet the expectations of the public to speak up for their interests at EU level. The quarrel started with migration policies, but it is spilling over into a broader cultural conflict.

Central European leaders win additional points for saying that this part of Europe is different (that is to say better) than western Europe, which must be no longer so diligently imitated. This East-West fragmentation (like the North-South divide on austerity) will play a significant role in the run-up to the European elections in May. And after that, it may be difficult to put the European puzzle together again.

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© REUTERS/Stephane Lecocq/Pool

It was a classic elephant-in-the-room situation: In early November, Europe’s largest political alliance, the European People’s Party, held its all-important pre-election congress in Helsinki with speeches from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. Several EPP heavyweights talked about upholding democratic freedoms and values, but notably, no-one explicitly named the target of their warnings—the person sitting right next to them: Hungary’s illiberal premier Viktor Orbán.

The EPP was keen to display unity at the congress as it heads into the European Parliamentary elections next May. The gathering followed months of speculation over whether the EPP could split after the election, with some liberal-minded deputies joining a yet-to-be formed alliance with France’s president Emmanuel Macron, and whether Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party would leave to lead their own alliance with other like-minded European nationalists.

The EPP has had an Orbán problem for years. The Hungarian premier has been systematically undermining rule of law and democratic values in Hungary, and challenges those same fundamentals in the European Union. Ongoing demonstrations in Budapest for independent media and courts, and against a labor law increasing overtime hours, will cause further headache for Europe’s largest political alliance. This week, opposition MPs were violently thrown out of the public media’s headquarters in Budapest, the central propaganda-machine for Orbán, after they vowed to read protestors’ demands on air. Orbán, who has never faced political consequences on the European level for his actions, is unlikely to back down, putting the EPP in an uncomfortable spot.

The EPP is the powerhouse party in Brussels and much of Europe. Its politicians head the three most important institutions in the European Union and command seven governments in the (still) 28-member EU, plus they hold the Romanian president’s post. The EPP has sheltered Orbán for years, with the party’s president Joseph Daul, an influential French politician, amicably referring to Orbán as the party’s “enfant terrible.”

The EPP’s Red Lines

Initially, EPP members were arguing that keeping Orbán close would tame the Hungarian prime minister, who likes to see himself as a “street-fighter,” and curb his autocratic tendencies. It set out what it called “red lines” over Orbán’s targeting the Central European University in Budapest, but failed to act when the CEU did decide to move to Vienna as the Hungarian government refused to secure its future in the Hungarian capital. Despite mild EPP criticism, Orbán kept running his anti-EU, anti-liberal, anti-migration campaigns, and continued to centralize power back home. Liberal-minded EPP members in the European Parliament grew increasingly annoyed with the lack of disciplinary action, and saw Orbán as a dangerous pull for EPP to the right.

The frustration with Orbán boiled over last September, when the majority of EPP members in the European Parliament, including its leader, Bavarian Manfred Weber, who is running for the presidency of the EU commission, voted to launch a sanctions procedure against Hungary under Article 7 of the Lisbon treaty for breaching EU rules and values. But the procedure is unlikely to lead anywhere, as deciding on biting sanctions depend on fellow member states reluctant to challenge each other’s internal measures.

Despite calls to kick Fidesz out, the EPP party leadership refused to tackle the issue, arguing that according to the party rules, seven member parties from five different member states need to come forward with a request. No such request has been made. Petteri Orpo, the leader of the Finnish National Coalition Party, tentatively said that if there were other six parties, his group would join in calls for Fidesz’s expulsion.

Clear Intentions

Orbán isn’t hiding his intention to pull the EPP to the right either. He made it clear in a speech in June 2018 that he does not want to leave the EPP and create what he called a “successful anti-immigration” party, but rather he wants the center-right alliance to turn his direction and return to its “Christian democratic roots.”

He argued that the EPP could either become a flavorless, colorless party stuck in an anti-populist coalition with the social democrats and liberals, or move to the right and continue shaping EU politics. “The other model which has been successfully tested in Austria and Hungary is taking up the challenge, is not creating such a people’s front, is taking the issues raised by new parties seriously, and is giving responsible answers to them,” Orbán said at the time.

The EPP attempted to portray itself in Helsinki as a united political force that can stop the threat of extremist and populism in Europe. Yet speakers at the congress were more interested in rallying EPP members against their socialist and liberal contenders than populists. The party leadership also knows that Orbán will deliver at the ballot boxes. His party alliance is expected to win well over a dozen MEPs to the party in May’s election, much needed by the EPP, which could lose 30-40 seats, according to projections.

Orbán argued at the party should respect winners. “What is even more important to understand: we have to win, not just survive, and victory must be wanted. Let us not listen to our opponents, and let us not measure ourselves by the standards of the leftist parties and the liberal media. […] The European elections must be won at home, in each of our countries. In order for the EPP to become the party of the winners again, we need winning prime ministers,” he told delegates.

EU council president Donald Tusk retorted in his speech following Orbán: “We all want to win the upcoming elections. But let us remember that at stake in these elections are not benefits and jobs, but the protection of our fundamental values. Because without them, our victory will make no sense.”

The most recent EPP argument for not stepping up criticism of Orbán cites Brexit. Party officials argue that the Brexit process really started when British Conservatives, led by David Cameron, left the EPP and formed their own group in 2009. This started the UK’s drift away from the EU core, they say. The same could happen with Hungary if Orbán is put under more pressure. Meanwhile, EPP president Daul insists on keeping the party as large and wide-reaching as possible. The continued support for Orbán’s autocratic measures will nevertheless further encourage the Hungarian leader. It might also signal an EPP shift to the right during and after the European elections.

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© REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

Opponents of Viktor Orbán’s brand of self-described “illiberal democracy” were cheering yesterday when the European Parliament voted to start a process stripping the Hungarian government of EU rights unless it stops its rule of law violations.

But behind the scenes, many within Europe’s mainstream conservative parties are worried that the vote may have just unleashed a monster. Depending on what happens next, yesterday’s vote could kick off a chain reaction that neuters Angela Merkel on the European stage and creates the most powerful far-right movement in Europe since the end of the World War II.

In other words, a development which is the exact opposite of what those cheering yesterday’s vote want to see. All eyes are now on Orbán to see how he will react.

Losing His Shield

To understand what’s coming next, we need to understand how we got here. This week’s invocation of Article 7—an emergency procedure designed to safeguard basic protections for democracy and civil liberties—is not a response to recent developments. Orbán has been dismantling democratic institutions in Hungary since his Fidesz party won a supermajority in the Hungarian parliament in 2010. What has changed is Orbán’s ambitions.

Until now, Orbán has been protected from EU criticism by the European Peoples Party (EPP), the pan-European group of center-right parties of which Fidesz is a part. It is the most powerful political group in Europe. Not only is it the majority party in the European Parliament, it also counts the President of the European Commission, the President of the European Council and the German chancellor as members. When Orbán took office, 15 of the EU’s 27 governments were under EPP control (that number is now eight).

Last year the Article 7 process was set in motion for the first time in EU history against Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) government, a close ally of Fidesz that is also dismantling democratic, judicial and media institutions. Law & Justice is not part of the EPP, it is instead part of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a euroskeptic group founded by David Cameron and the British Conservatives in 2009 as a break-away from the EPP.

But all attempts to censure Hungary for similar behavior were blocked by the EPP and its leader, Manfred Weber, who has tried to serve as a bridge-builder and keep the group together.

So what changed? It was Orbán’s behaviour. Now that he has consolidated his untouchable power in Hungary—solidified in April in an election OSCE observers said was based on “intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric, media bias, and opaque campaign financing”—he has set his sights on Europe.

Orbán has given speeches in recent months calling on the EPP to move further to the right and embrace his fight against liberal democracy and multiculturalism. He has not-so-subtly suggested that if it doesn’t, he will look for political allies elsewhere. He has publicly disparaged CDU leader Angela Merkel and developed close ties with her critics, particularly Horst Seehofer, the head of her Bavarian sister party the CSU. He has also been courting Austria’s chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

Meanwhile, he is developing a clear alliance with Poland’s PiS and Italy’s Lega, both of whom are not in the EPP.

The fear until now has been that that if the EPP angered Orbán by voting for Article 7, he would leave the group and take his 12 MEPs with him. He might also take other countries’ MEPs. There has been speculation that Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) might leave with him. There have even been whispers that the CSU might leave with Orbán to join a new party—something that would most likely cause the German government to collapse.

With such dangerous possibilities, the EPP had calculated that the risk of invoking Article 7 was too great. “He may be a bastard, but for the moment he’s our bastard,” an EPP staffer once said to me, quoting Nixon.

That calculation changed when Orbán seemed to be suggesting that he will leave the group anyway before next May’s European Parliament election. His demands for the EPP to lurch right were unacceptable to the group’s leadership.

And so, the EPP decided to call Orban’s bluff—betting that despite the prime minister’s bluster, Fidesz does not want to leave the largest political group in Europe.

Orban’s Next Move

But it is a bet few in the EPP feel confident about. In the parliamentary halls in Strasbourg this week, there are whispers that Orbán may be about to leave, possibly within days.

What seems more likely is that he will bide his time for now and start courting various forces on the European right about the possibility of forming a new political group to the right of the EPP. Such a group could be formed in the next seven months to be ready for the European election, or he could wait until after the election to see the relative strength of each party in terms of number of seats.

Given his stated eagerness that this election be fought on ideological federalist vs nationalist grounds, it seems likely he would want his new alliance in place before the election – to give voters a clear choice.

Orbán has two options. He can start a brand new group, or join the existing ECR. Both are fraught with complications.

There are currently 12 recognized “europarties.” In order to be official, a party must have received at least 3 percent of the votes cast in at least seven member states in the last European Parliament elections. Attracting the requisite number of parties from the requisite number of countries might be difficult for Orbán if he wants to start a brand-new europarty—and would probably require the ECR to disband. The requirements for forming a corresponding group in the parliament are even more stringent.

Given that the ECR was founded by the Tories, and the United Kingdom, post-Brexit, won’t be in the next European Parliament, the ECR’s continued existence has been called into question. But PiS, the only party in the group other than the Tories of any significant size, insist they want to keep the ECR alive.

For this reason, it might be easier for Orbán to join the ECR, with the tacit understanding that he would remake the group in his own image as its ideological leader. Without the Tories the ECR will be completely dominated by his Polish allies, so this would be a logical step.

A Far-Right Juggernaut?

It’s fair to assume that Orbán’s new partner Matteo Salvini would bring his populist Lega party into the fold, and Five Star might also be convinced to join (they were previously in Nigel Farage’s EFDD group, expected to be retired after this term). The ECR already counts the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People’s Party, the True Finns, and N-VA as members, and until recently Alternative for Germany (AfD) was also in the group.

It’s also conceivable that France’s Front National and the Netherlands’ PVV may want to join the new group. Finally there is the big question—would Austria’s ÖVP and Germany’s CSU leave the EPP to join? And would other EPP members follow?

Were such a group to be formed, it would include governing parties of Italy, Poland, Belgium, Austria, and Hungary, and the important opposition parties of France, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands. In other words, the political group founded by the British Conservatives in 2009 would become the most powerful far-right political movement in Europe since 1945.

This is the doomsday scenario the EPP has been terrified of these past years. It is the reason they turned a blind eye to Orbán’s transgressions for so long. But in the meantime, his reputation on the European stage has only grown.

During the parliament’s debate on the Article 7 resolution on Tuesday, the chamber was overwhelmed by far right and euroskeptic MEPs, many of whom normally don’t show up to the plenary, heaping praise on the Hungarian leader. Several called him a “leader.”

It was clear that the debate was not about Hungary at all. At this point, it is about the future of Europe. And about one-third of the current European Parliament views Orbán as their ideological hero.

The future of Europe depends on what Orbán decides to do with this adoration.

The post All Eyes on Orbán appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

When in Hungary, you cannot escape pálinka. It starts and end meals, mends broken hearts, and soaks up a variety of sorrows. The New York Times called it a drink that tastes like a “slap in the face.” It’s made of fruit, and its alcohol content must be between 37.5 percent and 86 percent. Pálinka is recognized by the EU as unique to Hungary and covered by its “protected designation of origin” laws.

True to his populist leadership style, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán put the brandy on his patriotic flag early on. After his return to power in 2010, the Hungarian premier championed a law allowing citizens to distill 50 liters of their own pálinka tax-free if they used approved equipment and did not sell it to others. The liquor industry and the EU were not impressed, but Hungarians, whose rate of alcohol consumption is, by the way, among the highest in Europe, were happy. They downed a shot with the cheer: “Egészségedre!” (“To your health!”)

Yet for all the battles Orbán fought with the EU, on pálinka, he chose to give way to Brussels. In fact, when it comes to pálinka, he’s even stood down twice. There have been two infringement procedures against Hungary over the government’s efforts to institute ultra-low taxes on brewing of the national drink. In the first case, the European Court of Justice struck down Budapest’s attempt to allow tax-free home brewing in 2014. So the following year, Hungary complied and began to tax home-brewed pálinka. But in new proposals published in early June this year, the government introduced a so-called health tax that applied to soft drinks but excluded spirits like pálinka–causing a second infringement procedure. This time the government did not wait for the court decision: it introduced an increased tax rate on the fruit brandy right away.

Choose your Fight

Orbán likely wanted to avoid a protracted battle with Europe when so many other issues are looming. Still, pálinka is no small matter in Hungary. It is consumed in a particular glass with a round belly to bring out the fruity flavors. Unlike vodka, it is not supposed to be served cold. Indeed, people who keep their pálinka in the refrigerator draw scornful looks across Hungary. Serving it cold kills the fruity aroma, everyone knows that! Hungarians are also known to boast about their own home-made pálinka.

The national drink, much like its home country, has had an impressive run over the last few decades. Even though home-brewing was illegal under communist rule, many defied the rule. Quality, however, often suffered. That was true, too, for commercially produced pálinka. Socialism meant that there shouldn’t be high quality drinks at prices suited only to an affluent bourgeoisie.

Since Hungary’s democratic transition, pálinka has built a reputation as a fine liquor, with tasting festivals popping up across the country and half-liter bottles costing as much as €50. There are about 600 distilleries in the country, and the number of commercial brewers jumped from 72 to 138 between 2010 and 2017, according to the agriculture ministry.

Pálinka Politics

Like many of Orbán’s battles with Brussels, the fight for the right to a tax-free, homemade pálinka is more than just a levy issue. It plays into the perception that Orbán is a self-made man from the countryside who takes on the high-minded urban intelligentsia and truly understands the Hungarian psyche. He protects Hungary’s national identity in the face of foreign pressure and is at the same time down-to-earth—someone you could throw back a pálinka with anytime. He’s known to say “Isten-isten,” another toast meaning “God-God,” before knocking back a shot.

Orbán, though not a heavy drinker, likes to pose with a shot of pálinka, especially during campaigns. In a 2013 photo album of his family’s Christmas celebrations, the paterfamilias posed with a glass in the company of his son-in-law, István Tiborcz. According to media reports, the EU’s anti-fraud office OLAF found “serious irregularities” in EU-funded projects carried out by a company once controlled by Tiborcz. OLAF recommended that Hungary’s public persecutors pursue charges, and that the European Commission should recover more than €40 million spent on the projects.

Hungarian authorities did launch a follow-up investigation, but they are unlikely to be tough on the prime minister’s family. One more reason to drink! And when you reach for that glass, remember that in 2012 Orbán likened Europe to alcohol. “Europe will slowly become like alcohol: it inspires us to achieve great goals but also prevents us from reaching them,” he told a crowd at one of his state-of-the-nation speeches.
If Europe is alcohol, Orbán is sure to stay sober.

The post Words Don’t Come Easy: “Pálinka” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.