PM Orbán is sailing against the winds in the EU once again

HUNGARY - In Brief 02 Jul 2023 by Istvan Racz

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The EU Council held its semiannual summit meeting on June 29-30. The European media is full of the story that Hungary, this time together with Poland, the other usual suspect, once again blocked the consensus at the meeting. And yes, that is right, although the summit itself played a role only at the level of gestures, rather than in terms of decisions, in this respect. The way it happened was that the EU adopted a new set of policies on the migration of asylum-seekers into the EU, including their treatment, procedural rules, financing, acceptance or refusal, and solidarity among EU member states. Poland and Hungary obviously opposed the deal, and so the Council delegated the decision to a lower level within its own structure, at which a qualified-majority decision is sufficient, unlike at the summit meeting, where a unanimous decision is required. So the new migration policies were approved by a lower-level meeting several weeks ago, where Hungary and its partner proved to be a 'qualified minority', voted down comfortably from the majority's point of view. So far so good. But the EU Council wanted to issue a communiqué at the summit, in which they would have emphasised the (this time non-existent) unity within the EU, with which the new migration policies were adopted. Hungary and Poland objected this, stressing that there used to be an agreement on the subject that decisions on migration would be made only if full consensus among members existed, which was obviously not the case this time. Here, the practical problem is that issuing a communiqué requires unanimous approval. So, unable to go ahead as they wished, the EU mainstream decided at the summit to pretend bein...