The chief spokesman for the European Union’s executive arm, Eric Mamer, announced the move Monday evening, saying that it will send senior civil servants rather than commissioners to informal meetings of ministers held in Hungary, which holds the bloc’s rotating presidency.
He cited “recent developments marking the start of the Hungarian Presidency” as the reason for the move in a post on the X social media site. The commission will also skip the traditional visit of its commissioners to the country holding the presidency.
The move follows a decision by Sweden, Finland, Poland and three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to skip the informal meetings during Hungary’s presidency, which lasts through the end of the year.
Orban blindsided western allies working to present a united front on Ukraine when he traveled to Moscow earlier this month to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then to Beijing to see President Xi Jinping.
The move by the commission doesn’t apply to a planned informal summit of leaders in Budapest in November, or the regular meetings of ministers in Brussels and Luxembourg during the year.
Orban is fucking around, it’s time the EU makes him find out.
I live in the USA so I’m talking out of my ass but, why hasn’t Hungary been locked out of the union yet ?
As far as I know there is no process to kick any members out. It just wasn’t put in place.
Article 7 can remove voting rights from a country. The process of invoking this against Hungary is ongoing since 2015. They can’t start it because Article 7.2:
The European Council must then decide unanimously to proceed to Article 7.3.
The European Council is composed of the head of states or governments, and until last year PiS from Poland, conservative friends of Orbán always voted against this and saved his ass. They were ousted in last election, they are the opposition now in Poland, so it sounds good, but then, they elected Fico in Slovakia, who will help Orbán now, he is also pro Russian. Until Orbán has at least one friendly government elected somewhere in EU, they can’t do anything with him.
Funny part, Fico is leftist conservative, Orbán is nowadays far-right and last time Fico was PM between 2012 and 2018 they didn’t like each other. Somehow they became best friends since last year…
PiS and Orban didn’t always see eye to eye either, but they both knew it was useful to have someone back them up regardless, because they don’t want to be on the receiving end of another punishing vote later.
Hungary is not just Orban, but also millions of other Hungarians. Many of them mislead by government propaganda.
