Tag Archive for: Hungary

As Orban assaults democracy, EU must boldly reclaim its integrity

Whenever Europeans return from their summer holidays, calls for a structural overhaul of the European Union are practically inevitable. This year will be no different, though the impetus for change may be more powerful than ever.

The EU is facing numerous daunting, even existential, challenges. War rages on its doorstep, economic competitiveness lags, and deep social polarisation persists. Political uncertainty in France and indecision in Germany compound the EU’s fragility, precisely when an unpredictable leadership transition in the United States, which threatens to usher in a prolonged period of American isolationism, leaves Europe with little choice but to take its fate into its own hands.

The EU has managed to overcome severe disruptions in recent years, from sovereign-debt crises to the withdrawal of Britain. But, in today’s geopolitical environment, it is weak, vulnerable and ill-prepared to handle the challenges it faces. The enduring influence of populist forces—which weaponise concerns over illegal migration and openly defy European unity—is a major reason why.

For example, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has led Hungary’s government since 2010 (after previously holding office from 1998 to 2002), has seemingly made it his mission to erode the rule of law in Hungary and across the EU, while undermining European cohesion. And last month, his government assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.

Within days, Orban carried out surprise visits to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing to discuss a potential Ukraine peace deal,making a clear bid both to exploit the EU’s institutional apparatus and to undermine it strategically. He also attended—again, with no coordination or warning—the summit of the Organization of Turkic States, which includes as an observer the unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

EU leaders scrambled to clarify that Orban had no mandate to represent the union externally, let alone to negotiate any kind of Ukraine peace deal. To highlight that Orban was acting out of turn, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell, stripped Hungary of the right to host the next meeting of foreign and defense ministers, normally the job of the Council of the EU president.

Unfazed, Orban proceeded to announce a new fast-track visa system that would enable citizens of eight countries, including Russia and Belarus, to enter Hungary without security checks, raising fears about the integrity of the Schengen Area of border-free travel and EU security more broadly. Orban has also sought, together with his counterparts in Slovakia, to use EU levers to force Ukraine to end its ban on the transit of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline that runs through its territory. Most recently, Hungary blocked a joint EU statement on the ‘irregularities’ of the presidential elections in Venezuela, prompting Borrell to issue a separate statement.

EU leaders can do all the damage control they want, but Orban is achieving his goal of making the Union appear confused, discordant and weak. Having internalised key lessons of the Soviet era, he knows that empires and institutions begin to falter once they become objects of ridicule.

This has contributed to the growing impression that, in a world increasingly defined by geopolitical power plays and realpolitik, the EU’s moral authority and commitment to values-based governance are quaint and ineffective—relics of the past. A lack of visionary leadership and cohesion among key members have only compounded the problem.

Not only has the once-powerful Franco-German engine of European integration run out of steam; European Commission President ’s new mandate—which she secured by crafting an ambiguous platform that sought to appeal to a broad spectrum of interests—seems unlikely to bring profound change. Against this backdrop, forging a coherent vision on critical issues like competitiveness, innovation and defence will prove difficult, at best. Those who stand to gain the most from this situation are spoilers, such as Orban, who have learned how to exploit disunity and ambiguity.

During past crises—from the Brexit negotiations to the EU’s previous dealings with Hungary over Orban’s assaults on democracy and the rule of law—the EU has relied largely on a legalistic and technocratic approach, which has often left it worse off. But calls for the EU to start speaking the language of power have remained unheeded. And while proposals for strengthening the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy’s mandate have been advanced, they represent little more than cosmetic changes.

To regain its footing, the EU must act with urgency and resolve, even if that entails uncomfortable confrontations with member states. And to thrive in the world of today and tomorrow, it must, once again, establish itself as an indispensable partner for the US.

This means strengthening its economy, not least through innovation. It also means heeding former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s advice to engage more effectively with younger generations of Americans. Bolstering the image of the EU, which often is viewed more negatively than individual member states, is essential.

With US President Joe Biden now a lame duck, Ukraine and Europe have entered a period of elevated vulnerability. Russia’s hybrid attacks could escalate in the coming months, posing a significant challenge for the EU, especially with Orban at the helm of the council. If the upcoming US presidential election brings Donald Trump back to the White House, pressure for a negotiated peace in Ukraine could intensify, further disrupting an already fragile geopolitical landscape.

The EU faces a stark choice: it can either continue to allow internal and external forces to weaken it, or it can act boldly to reclaim its integrity and strengthen its influence. From encouraging innovation and bolstering the rule of law to establishing and implementing a shared foreign-policy vision, the EU must demonstrate that it can be both principled and powerful, or risk being left behind.

Is the European Union too big for further enlargement?

This month the European Union celebrated the 20th anniversary of its biggest-ever enlargement, which brought 10 new members into the bloc. That event remains a potent reminder of the EU’s potential to advance peace and unity across the European continent. But, at a time of deep internal divisions and an increasingly volatile external environment, the giddy idealism of 2004 seems a distant dream, and the prospects of further enlargement appear uncertain.

The promise of EU accession has been long considered a powerful mechanism for strengthening stability, democracy, and prosperity across the continent. The addition of Portugal and Spain in the 1980s—with democratic transitions in both countries—exemplified this dynamic.

But by 2004, when eight post-communist countries, Malta and Cyprus joined, not to mention the 2007 accession of Bulgaria and Romania, the logic of enlargement had shifted. Expanding the single market and fortifying the foundations of democracy across Europe were still critical objectives.

But by welcoming Central and Eastern European countries into the European family, the EU was also demonstrating that it had overcome its past of war and division. The new members, for their part, welcomed the chance to escape centuries of limbo between Russia and the West, even though Russia no longer seemed to pose much of a threat to its neighbours, at least in the eyes of the EU.

Today, with a war raging on the EU’s doorstep, there is no question that Russia is dangerous. Just four days after the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine applied for EU membership. Driven by a sense of moral responsibility, rather than genuine enthusiasm for further enlargement, the bloc quickly granted it candidate status. There are now nine recognised candidates for EU membership, mainly in Eastern Europe.

But, while the 2004 big bang was a success, it cannot serve as a model for future enlargement. Each accession brings its own challenges, which demand nuanced solutions. One key challenge today, which has undermined the old EU enlargement narrative, is democratic backsliding in some member countries.

Most notably, Hungary has clashed repeatedly with the EU over the anti-democratic policies pursued by Prime Minister Viktor Orban since he returned to power in 2010. In Poland, an Orban-emulating right-wing government was replaced last year by a three-party coalition committed to shoring up democracy, but tensions persist. Slovakia’s populist-nationalist prime minister, Robert Fico, was recently the target of an assassination attempt.

This trend has undermined EU-level decision-making, with national interests often trumping the will of the majority. For example, Orban repeatedly blocked EU support for Ukraine and has cultivated closer trade and investment ties with China at a time when other EU members are seeking to reduce dependence on the Chinese market. Budapest was one of only three stops Chinese President Xi Jinping made on his recent trip to Europe, and he and Orbán announced that their countries will form an “all-weather partnership.’

More broadly, the EU’s vision for the future—from its ambitious European Green Deal to its approach to migration—faces considerable resistance, dampening enthusiasm for further integration and enlargement. If the EU institutions are struggling to chart a common vision for 27 member states, how can they possibly accommodate as many as 36? After all, this new EU would not only be bigger; it would also be more diverse.

The enlargement debate has never been free of questions of geographical determinism. But, recognising the geopolitical and economic advantages of wider membership, the EU sought to avoid potential conflicts not by excluding countries on geographical grounds, but rather by updating its accession policy to include conditionality. If a country wants to join the EU, it must meet certain standards in a range of areas, from minority rights to judicial independence. This helps to explain why Turkey’s accession process is indefinitely stalled, despite its candidacy being a geopolitical no-brainer.

Can Georgia, which applied for EU membership in 2022, prove more successful at meeting the conditions for EU membership? That now seems unlikely, judging by the government’s recent effort to enact a Russian-inspired ‘foreign agent’ law requiring civil-society groups and independent media that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as organisations ‘bearing the interests of a foreign power’. Though the law was vetoed by President Salome Zourabichvili and, more importantly, sparked massive protests by a population that overwhelmingly supports EU accession, the government appears unmoved and is ramming the bill through.

Serbia is hardly in a better position. Though the country has been an EU accession candidate since 2012, only 33 percent of Serbians want to join, according to a 2023 survey. Xi also stopped in Belgrade during his recent European tour, signing an agreement to build a ‘shared future’ with Serbia.

As for Ukraine, its war with Russia is not the only barrier to EU membership. Far-reaching economic and governance reforms would be needed to meet accession criteria. Moreover, the country’s vast agricultural sector has raised competition concerns among EU farmers.

If a new, larger EU is to function, creative solutions will be needed. Many have advocated a multi-speed Europe, in which member countries move toward integration at their own rate, with a set of vanguard countries leading the way. But in the absence of a common vision for the future—meaning different objectives, not just different capacities for integration—what is really needed is a Europe of variable geometry, which offers a more pragmatic approach to integration in the face of irreconcilable differences.

Today, the EU is at risk of becoming the chessboard on which struggles between the United States and China play out, rather than a player in its own right. How it navigates the enlargement debate, including its success in updating and streamlining decision-making, will help determine whether this risk materialises.

Europe’s chance to finish off illiberal democracy

The results of the recent elections in Poland and Slovakia underscore the two countries’ diverging political trajectories. In Poland, the democratic opposition won enough parliamentary seats to oust the increasingly authoritarian Law and Justice (PiS) party. While Polish President Andrzej Duda gave PiS Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki the first shot at forming a government, the opposition parties have already announced a coalition deal.

Meanwhile, in Slovakia, the left-wing populist party Slovak Social Democracy (Smer), led by former prime minister Robert Fico, eked out a narrow victory, setting the stage for a possible return to kleptocratic rule.

Both elections generated record-high turnout. In Poland, nearly 73% of eligible voters cast ballots—the highest rate since the fall of communism. Slovakia’s turnout, at 68.5%, was the country’s highest since 1998.

If the opposition Civic Platform, led by former prime minister Donald Tusk, succeeds in forming Poland’s next government, it will face the challenge of curtailing populism at home, embodied by a president elected by PiS. When it comes to foreign policy, a Tusk administration would bolster diplomatic support for Ukraine and focus on mending ties with the European Union, especially with key members such as Germany and France. Poland’s return to the democratic fold will rehabilitate its international image and strengthen its influence in Europe.

By contrast, Fico’s return to power in Slovakia raises significant concerns for two main reasons: his aspiration to mirror Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s strategy of consolidating control over the state and its key institutions, and Slovakia’s likely departure from its erstwhile Western-oriented foreign policy.

Fico’s first directive—halting arms shipments to Ukraine—was more symbolic than consequential. Slovakia had largely depleted its stockpiles and sent everything it could to Ukraine. Nevertheless, Fico’s pro-Russia stance suggests that his new government will drag its feet on implementing new EU sanctions against Russia and may also seek to reopen defence agreements with the United States. In both cases, however, Fico will have to tread carefully, considering that Slovakia remains dependent on the EU’s cohesion funds and NATO’s security guarantees.

Given that Fico won the election by a razor-thin margin, his chances of replicating Orban’s illiberal model appear slim. Not only does Orban’s Fidesz Party have an absolute parliamentary majority, but his regime is underpinned by an authoritarian vision of a Christian nationalist–conservative state supported by a relatively homogeneous and compliant citizenry. By contrast, Fico has no clear vision for Slovakia beyond his own quest for power and personal enrichment. Moreover, his return to power signals the political comeback of his notorious associates Robert Kalinak and Tibor Gaspar, both of whom have been investigated for their alleged involvement in the 2018 assassination of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova.

In his public statements, Fico often oscillates between sounding like an anti-vaccine spokesperson, a pro-Kremlin parrot and an anti-NATO and anti-American mouthpiece—whatever extreme position happens to appeal to his embittered and alienated voter base. But his actions often betray his deference to the EU and NATO. Crucially, it was during his tenure as prime minister that Slovakia integrated closely with the rest of Europe, joining the Schengen area in 2007 and the eurozone in 2009. Fico even pushed for the country to join the ‘core EU’, placing it in stark contrast with the more Eurosceptic positions of its eastern neighbours. On other occasions prior to his re-election, Fico’s actions deviated from his public statements—for example, when he repeatedly called for lifting the energy, financial and defence sanctions the EU slapped on Moscow after it annexed Crimea, only to support them quietly in EU forums.

The Polish and Slovak elections offer valuable lessons for pro-democracy movements challenging populist regimes across Europe. Poland’s experience demonstrates the effectiveness of uniting a diverse coalition of democratic forces—progressives, leftists, technocrats, traditionalists and conservatives—around a common cause. By focusing on PiS’s concentration of power, its attacks on the judiciary and the media, and its crackdown on civil rights, the opposition was able to illustrate the stakes of the rapid erosion of Polish democracy.

While PiS manipulated election laws, milked state-owned companies for campaign funds and even turned its back on Ukraine just to gain an electoral edge, the Civic Platform–led alliance managed to put aside its differences in an effort to level the playing field. In the end, that strategy proved successful.

The key takeaway from Slovakia’s election has little to do with Fico. While pro-democratic liberals led by Michal Simecka performed exceptionally well in urban centres such as Bratislava and Kosice, and among Slovak expatriates, their message failed to resonate with the rest of the country, particularly in rural areas and among senior citizens and those who felt abandoned by the political establishment. Unless centrist politicians address the concerns of these groups, disaffected voters will remain vulnerable to disinformation and the allure of populism.

Following Poland’s rejection of illiberalism, Fico’s Slovakia has become Hungary’s closest EU ally. But while the Slovak–Hungarian alliance may pose some challenges for the EU and NATO, the strength of the illiberal coalition and its ability to sow division in Europe is significantly diminished without Poland. One reason for this is that while the Orban administration hopes for rapprochement between the two countries on strategic issues, such as support for Ukraine and migration or nuclear policy, he doesn’t trust Fico in the same way that he trusts PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, his close political ally. Following the European Socialists’ suspension of Smer from its ranks, Fico, too, won’t waste precious political capital on alliances that may hurt his standing. If anything, deals will tend to get done behind closed doors.

With Europe’s illiberal governments in a weakened state, the EU must fulfill its promise to crack down on them. The bloc’s financial resources confer significant power. It must use this leverage to uphold democracy while it has the chance.

Hungary’s freedom election

When Hungarians go to the polls in April, liberal democracy will be on the ballot—and not only in Hungary. Former US President Donald Trump is promoting the populist prime minister, Viktor Orban. Tucker Carlson, Fox News’ most-watched on-air personality, has travelled to Budapest to promote Orban’s brand of ethnic nationalism. Nonetheless, Orban is facing his most serious challenge since returning to power in 2010.

Hungary’s normally fractious opposition has finally united behind a single candidate: Peter Marki-Zay, the conservative mayor of Hodmezovasarhely, a small, rural town in the centre of the country. A devout Christian with seven children, Marki-Zay is running on a pro-European, pro-rule-of-law, anti-corruption platform. He describes himself as ‘everything that Viktor Orban pretends to be’.

Orban, now 58, was a reform-minded firebrand 30 years ago. But over the past decade, he has transformed Hungary into an ‘illiberal democracy’ where only his voice represents the people. During his first term as prime minister in 1998–2002, Orban shepherded Hungary into NATO and the European Union. But after being defeated in 2002, he vowed never again to risk an electoral loss. Ditching his former pro-Europe, pro-democracy agenda, he embraced the politics of ethno-nationalism and anti-globalist grievance.

Upon returning to office in 2010 with a two-thirds parliamentary majority, Orban rewrote Hungary’s constitution and election laws to entrench himself in power. His party, Fidesz, soon controlled the country’s media and judiciary—including the Constitutional Court. And Orban and his cronies became very rich.

In gearing up for this year’s election, Orban has held rallies accusing the EU of attempting to ‘seize Hungary from the hands of the Virgin Mary, to cast it at the feet of Brussels’. Yet despite his rants and flagrant violations of EU rules and values, Hungary remains a member of the bloc. The EU’s convoluted bureaucracy simply wasn’t built to handle an autocrat like Orban. It lacks any mechanism to bring him to heel, largely because he has been able to rely on Poland’s own illiberal government to veto any action taken against him.

As a Hungarian by birth, this year’s election is personal for me. I was six years old in 1955 when I opened the door of our Budapest apartment and faced three men in workers’ overalls. ‘We came about the gas meter,’ one lied. ‘Get your mother.’ I called out my mother’s name, returned to my room and didn’t see her (or my father, who was already imprisoned) for almost two years. My parents, the last independent journalists in Soviet-controlled Hungary, were convicted of espionage and sentenced to long prison terms.

Even by Cold War standards, the jailing of a couple with two small children was sufficiently shocking to merit front-page coverage in the New York Times. Fortunately, my parents were freed 18 months later, just in time to cover the October 1956 Hungarian uprising. But that year’s revolution was brutally crushed by Soviet tanks and troops, inaugurating an occupation that would last until 1989. ‘Budapest,’ President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed in his second inaugural address in January 1957, ‘is no longer merely the name of a city; henceforth it is a new and shining symbol of man’s yearning to be free.’

I was still a small child when we began our westward journey the following year. But I have remained immensely proud of the land we were forced to abandon. On 16 June 1989, I stood with 300,000 Hungarians in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square, for the reburial of those who had died in the failed revolution.

Moved to tears by the solemn ceremony, I still recall the final speaker, a skinny, bearded 26-year-old who declared, ‘If we are determined enough, we can force the ruling [Communist] Party to face free elections.’ With those rousing words, the young Orban launched his political ascent. Within a few months, he had left Budapest to study at the University of Oxford on a grant from the American financier-philanthropist George Soros, whom Orban now routinely smears as an all-purpose scapegoat.

In 1995, while regional demagogues stoked a genocidal war in the Balkans, I chose my hometown as the place to wed the diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who was still in the midst of negotiating the end of that conflict. In his wedding toast, flanked by Hungarian President Arpad Goncz, my new husband said, ‘With this marriage, I also welcome Hungary back into the European family of democracies—where she belongs.’

Richard and I had friendly relations with Orban during his first term, even hosting him for dinner in our home. Although he is not a murderous dictator in the manner of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he lacks deep convictions beyond amassing power for himself. His genius lies in stoking feelings of thwarted nationalism, assuring Hungarians that only he can defend them against a hostile, non-Christian world. I frequently heard the same language from Balkan warlords 25 years ago.

Hungary may no longer jail independent reporters, but Orban’s regime has silenced critical voices in more subtle and equally effective ways, such as by withholding broadcast licences and consolidating news outlets into holding companies run by Orban’s allies. The Soviet troops who once patrolled my neighbourhood are long gone. In Orban, however, Putin has an ally inside the EU—even as the Kremlin threatens Hungary’s security from the east, in Ukraine.

Orban proved unfit to realise the promise he voiced in Heroes’ Square in 1989. When 90% of the media in Hungary is state-controlled, it is hard to call elections there ‘free’. Nonetheless, the choice this spring is not up to Trump or Carlson or even Orban; it is up to Hungarian voters.

Almost half a million Hungarians (out of a population of 10 million) have opted to emigrate since Orban assumed power. Now we, the Hungarian diaspora, have a special responsibility to make our voices heard, so that tomorrow’s Hungarians will not have to realise their potential elsewhere.

For the second time in my lifetime, Hungary has an opportunity to be ‘a symbol of man’s yearning to be free’. But Hungarians must seize it while they still can.

Europe bails out its populists

As expected, the European Parliament has torn into the European Council’s recently agreed budget and pandemic-response package. The €1.8 trillion price tag and proposed cuts to development funding, including science and research, have predictably met with resistance. But the biggest stumbling block was always going to be the proposal to make EU funding conditional on respect for the rule of law.

Arguing in support of such conditionality, Dacian Ciolos, the leader of the centrist Renew Europe group, claims that ‘this is not aimed against Hungary nor against Poland or any other member state’. Rather, the point is to ‘ensure that European money no longer finances governments which continuously turn their backs on our fundamental values on a daily basis’.

But it’s no secret that, in both Hungary and Poland, EU funds are systematically used to finance political or private corruption and fund handouts to political cronies. The most recent example is the takeover of Hungary’s last independent news website, read by millions of Hungarians. Moreover, the governments led by the right-wing Fidesz party in Hungary and Law and Justice party in Poland are among the least inclined to show solidarity when it comes to accepting refugees or supporting the European Green Deal. Poland, for example, is the only EU member state that has refused to adopt a ‘net-zero carbon’ target for 2050.

Instead of confronting these malefactors head-on, the European Council sought a compromise, delegating to the European Commission the task of creating a financial sanction mechanism to address violations of the rule of law. Whatever the commission devises will then be subjected to a qualified majority vote by member states.

The European Council’s compromise has met with no greater enthusiasm than in Hungary and Poland, where both governments dodged a bullet. In fact, it’s difficult to describe the deal as a compromise at all, because each side claims to have agreed to something different.

According to its president, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission is ready to introduce a clear and effective mechanism for punishing violations of the rule of law, and it expects to secure a qualified majority without a problem. By contrast, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki claims that any proposal on conditionality will require support from all national heads of government, including those of the Visegrad group (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia). ‘Without the agreement of Hungary, without the agreement of Poland, without the agreement of the Visegrad group, nothing will happen.’

Either Morawiecki assumes that the principle of unanimity will in fact apply, or he doesn’t believe that a qualified majority can be reached without the Visegrad group. In any case, there’s no question about where the Polish government stands. Poland has once again turned out to be the largest beneficiary of EU funds, securing €139 billion in grants and €34 billion in loans in the new seven-year budget. While this is less in percentage terms than what former prime minister Donald Tusk’s government obtained from the EU’s 2014–20 budget, the additional disbursements from the pandemic recovery fund will push the total much higher.

As a result, the actual effect of the compromise is the opposite of what the EU intended. PiS will now receive even more EU funds with which to finance social transfers and consolidate its power. Since the deal was announced, the Polish and Hungarian currencies have appreciated rapidly against the euro and the dollar, and the Warsaw and Budapest stock indexes have duly risen.

In the hierarchy of EU problems, it would appear that violations of the rule of law have been relegated by the pandemic, the resulting economic downturn, and the looming climate crisis. EU leaders seem to have faced a dilemma and decided that they could choose only one of the possible historic breakthroughs: they could pursue either joint borrowing to rescue member states in crisis (inaugurating a long-awaited EU fiscal policy) or joint enforcement of the rule of law.

When French President Emmanuel Macron touted the results of the European Council summit as a ‘historic day for Europe’, he was referring only to the recovery fund. When it comes to the rule of law, Europe’s day was all too typical. EU leaders arrived at a compromise that allowed everyone to claim victory, leaving the underlying issue unsettled—just as Poland and Hungary had hoped.

But it would be wrong to conclude that Morawiecki and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban are the bigger winners. Neither Hungary nor Poland is capable of pursuing a foreign policy of its own. And because both are exposed to constant pressure from abroad, they have no choice but to accept compromises—or even defeat—in the hodgepodge of EU decision-making.

The real winner is Germany, which now can maintain pressure on the Polish government while shielding it from suffering too stiff a penalty. The requirement that proposed sanctions be subjected to a qualified majority vote guarantees nothing. After all, the same condition applied to Article 7 procedures against Hungary and Poland last year, and that process remains stuck in the European Council.

To be sure, once the commission releases the details of the enforcement mechanism, it will be possible to apply greater pressure on Poland and Hungary. But neither country will face the budget guillotine immediately, given that the debate on this topic in the European Parliament and among member states could take two or three years.

Nobody wants to say it out loud, but everyone knows that isolating a country like Poland or Hungary would not benefit the West, and Germany, in particular, would have much to lose. Business in these countries is simply too good. The Visegrad group’s trade significance for Germany is greater than that of France, China or the United States, and it is rapidly growing.

Populism pays off not just for the ruling parties in Poland and Hungary, but also for Germany. And now this principle is being implicitly codified in the EU budget.

Pandemic plays into populists’ hands

Threats to national security invariably limit domestic political disputes. Now that governments have assumed a leading role in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, the political opposition in countries under populist rule is quickly being marginalised. In theory, the authorities in these countries could use the crisis to invoke a state of emergency to limit democracy. But even if they don’t go that far, the need for social distancing and other containment measures implies a sharp contraction of the public sphere.

In the absence of large gatherings or campaign rallies, political debate has migrated completely to the media, which is devoting its full attention to the disease. This is happening for pragmatic reasons—Covid-19 coverage is what the reading and viewing public currently demands—but also for ethical reasons: providing accurate information about the coronavirus is an essential service.

Still, wall-to-wall coverage of the pandemic leaves no attention to spare for political opposition parties and movements. Hence, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee to challenge US President Donald Trump in November’s election, has essentially disappeared overnight from public view.

Americans are instead furnished with daily, live coverage of Trump’s press conferences–cum–political rallies, in which he trots out government experts who somehow must try to correct his lies and misinformation about the pandemic while standing right next to him. Similarly, in Israel, Benny Gantz, the leading opposition politician, decided to join a new government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing the extenuating circumstances of the pandemic.

In Central and Eastern Europe, populist governments are exploiting the suspension of normal life to implement long-held plans. With the international media focused completely on the pandemic, few people will notice what’s happening in Hungary or Poland. Reporting on Poland’s de facto leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán seems to have disappeared even from the pages of media outlets that have reliably covered them for years.

Whereas the Hungarian opposition is protesting against Orbán’s imposed ‘state of emergency’, the Polish opposition is demanding one. The West, even if it wanted to protest, could easily get lost in this quagmire and not know what to demand.

Hungary’s parliament has now given Orbán the authority to govern by decree for an indefinite period of time. Once vested with emergency powers, he will be able to suspend individual rights and force people into quarantine on pain of imprisonment. His government also will be able to jail—for up to five years—journalists deemed to be spreading false or distorted information.

By contrast, in Poland, the last thing that Kaczynski and his Law and Justice (PiS) party want is to introduce a state of emergency, because doing so would mean postponing the next election. Under current conditions, Poland’s incumbent president, Andrzej Duda, is certain to win re-election on 10 May. The PiS government is thus using the pandemic to sweep Duda into another term while the opposition is in coronavirus lockdown.

Duda and PiS ran into significant trouble in January and February when they were found to have allocated 2 billion zloty (US$480 million)—an unprecedented sum—to Poland’s public media, which is effectively a PiS mouthpiece. Since the opposition had been calling for those funds to go towards healthcare, that decision now looks all the more scandalous.

Moreover, before Covid-19 struck, the opposition presidential candidate Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska was rising in the polls. In an IBSP survey conducted on 14–16 January, Kidawa-Blonska, with a projected 49.91% share of second-round votes, was trailing just behind Duda, who had a vanishingly small majority of 50.09%. But now that Kidawa-Blonska has been forced to stop most forms of campaigning, her support had fallen to 44.12% as of 10–13 March, and Duda’s had risen to 55.88%.

Polish voters, fearing the pandemic, have little appetite for partisan brawls. The demand now is for political agreement to address the crisis, which makes it much more difficult for the opposition to attack the incumbent government. Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who recently stepped down as president of the European Council, expressed disappointment as much during a recent appearance on TVN24, where he chastised the Polish opposition for its overly submissive attitude.

Tusk also has indicated that he doesn’t intend to vote on 10 May, and that he won’t encourage his family, friends or other voters to do so, owing to the risks of contracting Covid-19. As he told Gazeta Wyborcza, ‘Only a madman or criminal could propose holding elections now.’

In surveying who is most likely to turn out on 10 May despite the pandemic, Gazeta Wyborcza has determined that it is mainly PiS supporters. If the presidential election is held as scheduled, Duda will get as much as 65% of votes in the first round, whereas if it were postponed until after the pandemic has passed, his first-round vote would fall to around 44%.

Kaczynski and his party aren’t concealing their intentions in pushing for the election to be held during the crisis. ‘It would be extremely unfavorable for the president and the prime minister to be from different political camps and to argue’, Kaczynski said in a recent interview. ‘Today, under different conditions, we need effective crisis management and political stability. This is also the reason why these elections should be held on May 10.’

Meanwhile, elections, primaries and referendums have already been postponed or altered (to mail-in ballots, for example) in more than 20 countries, including the United States, Spain, France, Germany and Italy. It’s therefore not surprising that 72% of Poles surveyed believe that the presidential election should be postponed.

After the election, PiS will have a three-year break in the electoral calendar, which it will use to consolidate its power. Polish civil society will remain the last bastion against unchecked PiS rule.

Will defunding Hungary and Poland backfire?

Discussions surrounding the European Union’s 2021–2027 budget are intensifying, owing to many European policymakers’ insistence that regional development funds be disbursed only to member states that are in compliance with EU rules. Under the Copenhagen Criteria, all member states are required to uphold the institutions of liberal democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights, and protections for minorities.

The proposal to attach new conditions to EU funding is directed at the populist governments of Poland and Hungary. But while these governments have certainly shown contempt for EU institutions, while ignoring the recommendations of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, they are too clever to defy EU rules outright. Most vexing of all, though, is the fact that Poland and Hungary are, respectively, the largest and fourth-largest beneficiaries of EU funds.

Those calling on the EU to ‘stop funding illiberalism’ include prominent European figures such as Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE) in the European Parliament, and French President Emmanuel Macron. But among those opposed to more stringent conditions are not just the ruling parties in Poland and Hungary, but also those countries’ opposition parties.

In both Poland and Hungary, the ruling parties have brought the opposition into line through nationalist blackmail. Any criticism of the Polish or Hungarian government is spun to look like criticism of Poland or Hungary itself. And, in Poland, the fear of being labelled unpatriotic has pushed opposition politicians to concede that the country belongs to the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) and its chairman, Jarosław Kaczyński.

Opposition politicians also argue that a suspension of EU funding would harm ordinary Hungarians and Poles, who should not be punished for the actions of their governments. That logic would make sense if the EU were confronting a non‑democratically elected government, like that of North Korea or Cuba. And yet the PiS and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party were elected. The question, then, is why Hungarians and Poles shouldn’t face the consequences of their electoral choices.

To be sure, in any democracy, at any given time, many citizens did not vote for the government. But when Scotland held its failed independence referendum in 2014, those who voted in favour had to accept that the democratic will of Scots at the time was to remain a part of the United Kingdom. Likewise, those who voted ‘Remain’ in the United Kingdom’s 2016 Brexit referendum had to accept the decision of the majority to leave the EU.

With these examples in mind, the suspension of EU funds hardly seems like the grave injustice that Polish and Hungarian politicians make it out to be. Unlike dictatorship, democracy promises citizens a vote, not happiness. But Hungarian and Polish opposition leaders warn that suspending EU funds could backfire and bolster public support for anti‑EU populists, who will be more than happy to play the victim.

Opposition members who criticise the idea of suspending EU funds for populist governments may make public appeals to morality, but what they really want is efficiency. They assume the suspension of EU funds would be broadly unpopular, and would strengthen populist rule rather than weakening it. Similarly, the moralising manifestos of Verhofstadt and Macron are not entirely unselfish. Politicians and journalists often mistakenly read this situation as if it were simply ‘about Poland’, or ‘about Hungary’, while in fact criticism of these countries forms part of a bigger picture. Both the ALDE and the European People’s Party Group (Christian Democrats) are expected to suffer severe losses, owing to Brexit and the larger collapse of the political mainstream in France, Germany and Italy.

Against this backdrop, Macron and Verhofstadt are each trying to assert their presence by taking a principled stand against Eastern European populists. They know that the Christian Democrats have been ‘contaminated’ by populism, not least by Fidesz’s presence in the group.

As for Poland, Macron has always mixed moral arguments with French economic interests. During a campaign stop at a Whirlpool factory that was scheduled to move to Poland, he promised to take a harder line against the PiS government for its fiscal policies. And once in office, he pushed through an EU‑level reform to limit the duration of posted workers, many of whom are in France, and most of whom come from Poland.

Macron and Verhofstadt’s aim in raising the spectre of Eastern European populists is to undermine their own populists at home. If they can carve out a strong enough faction within the European Parliament, they will be able to loosen the grip of the Christian Democrats and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, who currently decide everything.

But if the principle of ‘EU funding in exchange for the rule of law’ is indeed implemented, the costs might not even be borne by Kaczyński or Orbán, but rather by the next Polish and Hungarian governments. This is particularly true in Poland: although the PiS is still at the top of the polls, a coalition of non‑populist opposition parties could well overtake it. The more the EU Commission sours on what was once Eastern Europe’s model student of democracy, the clearer it becomes that Brussels will not be as favourably disposed to Poland as it once was, regardless of who is in power.