Can Europe get tough on Russia and one of its own members at the same time?
As I stood in a cold, disconsolate crowd in central Budapest late on Sunday night, listening to Hungarian opposition leader Peter Marki-Zay concede defeat in the country’s election, the Twitter feed on my phone filled with images of murdered Ukrainian civilians in the town of Bucha. The Ukrainian horrors are clearly far worse than the Hungarian miseries, but the two are fatefully connected.
In his victory speech, the Hungarian leader listed the “opponents” he had defeated, including the international media, Brussels bureaucrats and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has criticized him fiercely for his opposition to the weapon supplies and further sanctions that Ukraine desperately needs. Mr. Orban’s friend Mr. Putin, meanwhile, hastened to congratulate him on his victory.
Instead, Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party once again secured a two-thirds supermajority, enabling it to change the constitution at will. Whatever honeyed assurances it gives in Brussels or Washington, it will continue to consolidate what political scientists describe as an electoral authoritarian regime.
Yet having spent lavishly on tax and welfare handouts to win the election, Mr. Orban’s government needs EU funds to fill a big hole in its finances. Unless the EU is prepared simply to accept that it now has an authoritarian member state, it should at long last impose rigorous conditionality on the flows of European money which have long been one of the main founts of Mr. Orbán’s power.
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