TAll is well that ends well. Or almost. Announced as one of all dangers, the European Council of December 14 and 15, 2023 finally ended on a note of relief. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, conveniently left the conference room, at the invitation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to go have a coffee. In his absence, the twenty-six other heads of state and government decided to open negotiations for Ukraine’s accession to the European Union (EU).
However, he had trumpeted, during the previous weeks, that he would veto not only such a decision, but also the allocation to Ukraine of a support package worth fifty billion euros out of the four remaining years of the EU multiannual budget. These announcements had triggered a ballet of steps aimed at coaxing him. A trip to Budapest by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, a one-on-one dinner with President Macron at the Elysée, an ad hoc meeting before the opening of the summit with the same plus the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the German Chancellor did not, however, seem to have been enough to remove the uncertainties.
The Commission had also, and opportunely, announced, the very day before the Council, that it was releasing 10.3 billion euros of European funds hitherto held in connection with the long-standing dispute with Hungary over compliance with the rule of law in this country. Mr Orban himself strenuously denied that there was any connection between this decision and Hungary’s positions on the items on the Council’s agenda.
Choreographed staging
Relief bordered on euphoria on the morning of this restless night, which Charles Michel emphatically greeted as “a historic moment which proves the credibility, the strength of the European Union”. Certainly, the Hungarian Prime Minister maintained his veto on aid to Ukraine, but we quickly consoled ourselves by referring this question to bilateral aid procedures, more complex, it is true, but that the Brussels technocracy knows how to orchestrate perfectly. This will also be on the agenda of the next European Council, on 1er FEBRUARY.
We will learn that this nocturnal epilogue was part of a very choreographed staging to avoid a failure with serious consequences for an EU faced with a war on the continent. The Hungarian Prime Minister had in fact allowed himself to be convinced to feign a coffee break to allow the twenty-six other heads of state to take a decision which he later described as“insane, irrational and wrong”. At the center of the European game for a week, he will return to Budapest crowned with prestige. However, far from sanctioning a happy outcome, this bad play installs a pernicious logic in the European machinery.
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