Viktor Orbán's anti-woke resistance has made him the 'splinter under the fingernail' of the EU
Viktor Orbán's anti-woke resistance has made him the 'splinter under the fingernail' of the EU
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s role as Europe’s perennial spoiler has frequently brought the European Union to a breaking point as he has blocked crucial decisions to leverage concessions and forced EU leaders to find workarounds.
Hungary’s parliament will convene an emergency session on Monday to do something its western partners have waited for, often impatiently, for more than a year: to hold a vote, finally, on approving Sweden’s bid to join the NATO military alliance.
But Hungary’s governing party, led by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has signaled that it will boycott the session, blocking the chance for a vote and further delaying a decision on Stockholm’s bid. It’s the kind of obstruction of key policy objectives for which Orbán has become notorious within the European Union.
“We are the sand in the machinery, the stick between the spokes, the splinter under the fingernail,” Orbán said in a speech to tens of thousands of supporters in 2021.
That “stick between the spokes” tactic, and Orbán’s role as Europe’s perennial spoiler, has brought the EU to breaking point time and again as he has blocked crucial decisions to leverage concessions from the bloc, forcing its leaders to scramble to find workarounds.
anti-woke resistance
Really disappointing title from AP.
Yeah this is just childish bullshit journalism. Orban is for sure a piece of shit but like… who wrote this trash?
Viktor Orbán is an excellent American politician, he's insulated himself from internal attacks and is using his platform to just be a contrarian asshat. Hungary, internally, suffers from high unemployment and weak social safety nets.
These sorts of politicians destroy democracy, we always must remain vigilant of them.
Characterizing him as American is telling on yourself tbh
Just fucking embargo Hungary until he's gone, and make sure Hungarians know how to end it.
He's a speed bump that needs to be drove around.
How would Hungarian know how to remove him? Imagine Fox News being the ONLY available broadcaster in the country. 24/7 spouting EU bad, immigrants bad, King Orbán good. There is no escaping it, the government is in full control of the media.
If you look at the map, 2/3 of the country is rural, 1/3 is Budapest (and some other major cities). And that's exactly how they vote every time too. Budapest is a bastion of enlightenment, but the rest is just dark ages.
If he is so anti EU, why doesn’t he just exit the bloc? I mean they watched Brexit so they know how it’s done. If his whole message at home is that the EU is bad, why stay? Hungary either needs to remove Orban or stick to their rhetoric and leave the EU.
EU needs a way to vote these shit stains off the island. Full stop. That's the only path forward. This will only get worse over time.
Majority of Hungarians are still pro-EU, even a lot of his voters. Also, he still gets some EU funds, ending up in his and his friend’s pocket. There is no reason to leave, as long as he can stay in power in the current setup.
Honestly why won’t he leave the EU is simple. He gets money from the eu for projects that he can give to his cronies gets a kick backs from them to line his pocket. All while being able to use the EU as a scapegoat in Hungary when people don’t see improvement in their quality of life. Orbán can point at eu regulation and say, “look this is why your life isn’t improving” to the Hungarian people all while not actually doing much on his own to improve their lives. Orbán just wants to continue to hold his position and make money. He’ll shit on the eu all day long because it plays well with the majority of Hungarians all while getting a pay day. The eu does try to hold him to task from time to time but it really isn’t that effective. He’s rigged the game in his favor in Hungary so I don’t see change coming to Hungary anytime soon.
I think they were moving in that direction at some point. The PiS party of Poland, Orban in Hungary, was in discussions with Russia to start an alternative bloc to the EU, iirc.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That “stick between the spokes” tactic, and Orbán’s role as Europe’s perennial spoiler, has brought the EU to breaking point time and again as he has blocked crucial decisions to leverage concessions from the bloc, forcing its leaders to scramble to find workarounds.
“We have Orbán fatigue now in Brussels,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters ahead of an EU summit on Thursday, where the Hungarian leader threatened to derail plans to provide Ukraine with a major funding package.
It has long been conventional wisdom within the EU that Orbán’s intransigence is purely transactional: that he is holding up key decisions as a way to force the bloc into releasing billions in funding that it has withheld from Hungary over alleged breaches of rule-of-law and democracy standards.
But Péter Krekó, director of the Budapest-based think tank Political Capital, said that while securing the funds is important to Orbán to shore up Hungary’s ailing economy, Europe’s longest-serving leader is motivated by more than just cash.
Daniel Freund, a German member of the Green party and lawmaker in the European Parliament, said Orbán’s serial blocking of crucial EU decisions shows that his veto power has given him influence within the bloc that endangers its very ability to function.
An anti-Islam populist and Orbán ally won elections in the Netherlands in November, while the far-right Alternative for Germany party has risen to second place in national polls behind Berlin’s mainstream conservative opposition.
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Time to invoke Article 7
Human zit