Viktor Orban Profits From Friends and Funds from the European Union

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Viktor Orban’s latest power grab in Hungary speaks to his sheer ruthlessness and canny opportunism as a politician.

As nations around the world hunker down for the all-consuming fight against Covid-19, the Central European country’s prime minister has seized the opportunity to amass emergency powers to support his ambitions for “illiberal democracy.” In keeping with his past attacks on civil liberties, the media and the judiciary, they give Orban the right to rule by decree indefinitely, do away with elections, and threaten journalists who “distort” facts with a five-year jail sentence.

Sadly, it also speaks to the ineffectiveness of the European Union — founded on the values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law — in reining in abuses in its patch. The bloc’s response to Orban’s new powers has been meek. Without naming Hungary, 13 of 27 member states have expressed concern about the risk of rule-of-law violations, while the Commission, the EU’s executive body, has said it will evaluate the emergency law.

After a decade of strongman tactics from Orban and foot-dragging from the EU, this will likely have the same impact as anti-Vietnam War art, which Kurt Vonnegut once equated to that of “a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six-feet high.”

For one of Orban’s most experienced European sparring partners, former Commission Vice-President Viviane Reding, it is a disappointing yet predictable turn of events. She calls it “business as usual.” Her career has given her a front-row seat from which to watch Orban’s Fidesz party turn Hungary from a bright liberal hope for post-Soviet democracy into an authoritarian and xenophobic state run by a small circle of insiders. Despite Reding’s efforts to hold Orban to account as the Commission’s top justice official in the early 2010s — the Commission took Hungary to court over several rule-of-law abuses, including Fidesz’s attempt to force out hundreds of judges — he has won the long game.

By cajoling EU critics with concessions while sticking to his overall plan — something journalist Paul Lendvai has called the “peacock dance” — Orban has avoided serious censure and consolidated his power. “It’s the same scenario, again and again,” Reding, currently a member of Luxembourg’s parliament, tells me.

Orban’s ability to retain his grip on Hungary is one thing — the country’s historical scars, a fragmented opposition with its own share of scandals and extremism, and the relentless undermining of civil society all play their part. But how is such a tiny state, accounting for less than 1% of the EU’s GDP, able to run rings around its larger European neighbors that preach the rule of law? There are a few reasons. For one, member states like Poland aren’t going to enforce ongoing sanctions procedures against Hungary — launched in 2018 over persistent breaches of EU values — when they themselves face the same sanctions.

Significantly, Orban’s years of networking across Europe have brought him the endorsement of its biggest parliamentary bloc, the European People’s Party (EPP), which includes parties such as Angela Merkel’s CDU. When the EPP suspended Fidesz in 2019 over a nasty political campaign attacking billionaire philanthropist George Soros and Jean-Claude Juncker (an EPP member who was then-head of the Commission), it stopped short of expulsion. Fidesz has votes, and Orban’s self-styled defense of a “Christian” Europe and skill at exploiting popular fears about immigration still have their admirers in the ranks of his political family — such as France’s Republicains, historically the party of Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac.

It’s high time Orban’s EU friends take a more proactive stance. Reding’s Christian Social People’s Party in Luxembourg, along with 12 other EPP members, last week called for a full expulsion of Fidesz from the parliamentary bloc. There’s no unanimity for this yet, and booting out Fidesz wouldn’t stop it turning up elsewhere in parliament. But it’s the right call: The longer the EPP walks this tightrope, the more likely it is to fall off. Not only are its own pro-European values being undermined, but politically Orban’s tactics and rhetoric are helping the far-right more than his EPP colleagues — which include European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The next action to take, according to Reding, is to crack down on Orban’s financial support. Hungary received more than 6 billion euros ($6.5 billion) of EU funding in 2018, equivalent to 5% of the country’s GDP, while contributing only 1 billion euros. A majority of state contracts are funded by the EU, feathering the bed of business elites allied with Fidesz. The EU’s anti-fraud arm has investigated some cases of misuse of the money, but more needs to be done. Funding should be tied to respect for the rule of law, enforced by existing EU tools as well as new ones in the bloc’s forthcoming multiyear budget, Rutgers University’s R. Daniel Kelemen and Princeton University’s Kim Lane Scheppele have argued.

Obviously, a pandemic is hardly the ideal time to start a new EU bust-up when several crises are raging already. But long-term, rule-of-law abuses can corrode the bloc from within; this is a union bound by laws and not by force, as Reding puts it. Left unchecked, a “multispeed Europe” in terms of democratic values would wreck havoc on a lot of things: Trust between member states, confidence in the ability of national legal systems to fairly implement EU law, and consistency in the common market. As long as Orban keeps profiting from EU friends, and EU funds, that scenario draws nearer.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Brussels. He previously worked at Reuters and Forbes.

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