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The European Union’s legal service informed members of the bloc that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s recent visit to Moscow and his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin violated EU treaties, the Financial Times reported on July 11. Nonetheless, despite EU threats to have Hungary stripped of the presidency of the Council of the European Union, Orbán remains committed to his “peace mission” to end the war in Ukraine and even shunned US President Joe Biden to meet with his predecessor instead, Donald Trump.
On July 7, Orbán visited Russia for talks with Putin. The Hungarian prime minister described his visit as a continuation of the “peace mission” he began with a trip to Kiev in early July. Nonetheless, the EU’s legal service told member states on July 10 that Orbán had violated agreements that prohibit “any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives,” FT reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
At the same time, the Hungarian leader is said to have violated a provision requiring all members to conduct foreign policy “unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity.”
According to sources involved in the investigation, during the NATO summit in Washington on July 10, European leaders were discussing, among other things, a joint letter to Orbán that clarified their objections to his actions and demanded that he stop his independent foreign policy initiative. Another suggestion was a special meeting of EU foreign ministers specifically on the subject.
Some diplomats told the FT that many EU members have also discussed a possible boycott of informal ministerial meetings during Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the European Union.
A smaller number of countries have launched informal talks on how to use the EU treaty to limit Orbán’s ability to act during his presidency. Some EU officials have even privately suggested taking the presidency away from Budapest.
Politico reported that Hungary’s EU envoy, Balint Odor, was verbally heckled by his Brussels counterparts like never before.
“It’s unprecedented that the presidency would be reprimanded in such a way by all the others,” a senior EU diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Since Budapest took over the rotating EU presidency in July, Orbán has undertaken self-declared “peacekeeping missions” to Kiev, Moscow, Beijing, and Washington. However, they were “not conducted in the name of the European Union or any of its institutions,” Hungarian EU Affairs Minister János Bóka stressed at a news conference.
Media outlets reported earlier that Orbán had also sent confidential letters to European Council President Charles Michel and EU leaders detailing his recent trips to Kiev, Moscow and Beijing. Orbán reportedly said that Russia and China hoped that peace talks between Moscow and Kiev would begin by the end of this year.
Hungarian Foreign noted that Orbán met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit.
“We [Hungary and Turkey] have taken a common position that in the coming times, a peace conference in which both parties to the conflict will participate will be necessary. This is the only opportunity to reach an agreement,” he told M1 television.
Szijjártó also highlighted that the peace conference in Switzerland failed because Russia was not involved, adding:
“It is important that the peace conference planned for the second half of this year, whether in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere, involves both sides, Russia and Ukraine, to give the best opportunity to find a solution.”
Although the EU is outraged by Orbán’s peace mission, the Hungarian leader is a realist and has consistently said that Russia has won the war and that Western powers are just prolonging the suffering by continually sending weapons to Ukraine. In fact, he is so much of a realist that he, along with most pollsters, believes Donald Trump will win the US election and, therefore, he decided to fly into Mar-a-Lago on July 11 to discuss the Ukraine situation, effectively shunning Joe Biden by not requesting a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit.
Orbán has not had an official meeting with Biden since he became president nearly four years ago. The Hungarian prime minister met Trump in March this year in Mar-a-Lago and has endorsed him several times throughout the past eight years, even describing the billionaire as a “man of honour.”
It is unlikely that Hungary will be stripped of its presidency of the Council of the European Union, but it does indicate the anger and frustration that Orbán’s peace mission has caused in Brussels. Although the EU desperately wants the Kiev regime to prevail over Russia, a Trump reelection will all but end the war in a relatively short time, and this is the reality that Orbán is working with.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban made statements for the press. Photo: Aleksey Maishev, RIA Novosti
