Spencer Chretien was the guest of honour at the Center for Fundamental Rights’ latest event, where he talked about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, aiming to help an incoming new Trump administration. Mr Chetien also spoke about his time in the first Trump administration, President Trump’s trial in Manhattan, and the problems with the liberal bureaucracy in Washington, DC.
Belgium, currently holding the rotating EU Presidency, is urging member states to accelerate the Article 7 procedure against Hungary, which could result in the country losing its voting rights in EU decision-making. Pressure on Budapest over Ukraine has been increasing in recent months; Belgium’s call could be seen as part of this effort.
Facebook has deleted the recording of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech from public television’s page, with the absurd allegation that the video shared symbols associated with ‘dangerous’ individuals and organizations. Orbán spoke at the Peace March held on Saturday, discussing peace in Ukraine and the upcoming European elections.
A vibrant panel discussion on 30 May 2024 in Budapest looked at the impact of Brexit on Europe and the EU, and on the importance of nation-states and the conservative movement in a changing Europe.
‘Just as it was with both the early community of Islamic believers and the later caliphate-state, the goal is universal governance according to the norms of the sharia. However, jihad (or holy war)is now camouflaged under soft law—rules that are neither strictly binding nor completely lacking in legal significance but nevertheless incorporate some sort of expectation of legal relevance.’
In the short term, the process of de-dollarization is exploiting the current state of the business cycle in the US and EU. Just a small decrease in the number of transactions in which the dollar is denominated will cause a devaluation of the dollar and a prolonged state of higher interest rates in the US, together with quantitative tightening—all leading to a weakening of the economic position of the US, the EU, and the other G7 countries.
In what was a highly controversial process from the very beginning, a Manhattan jury found former President Donald Trump guilty on all felony counts. Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán expressed his continued support of the former President on social media, highlighting that ultimately it would be the American people to ‘make their verdict this November’.
‘If we treat the deepening understanding of the common value of Rule of Law as we would the space race, with definite winners and losers, then we degrade it. There can be no winners and losers here, really, as every state is a winner and a loser simultaneously in their daily battles on the frontlines of the Rule of Law. Some of these battles are acute, some try to tackle chronic symptoms, and it is very hard to credibly create systems of indexing, wherein each and every state actor may be qualified according to the same, abstract level of success or failure on these merits.’
According to information from POLITICO, EU leaders and some member states want to punish Hungary by giving the country a weak portfolio in the next European Commission. Hungary currently holds the position of Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, but tensions between Brussels and Budapest are rising due to Hungary’s resistance to Ukraine’s accession.
‘I firmly believe the EU is in dire need of a rule of law instrument but this instrument should be turned upside down. It should guarantee that the principle of rule of law developed and applied in Member States is similarly implemented in the activities of EU institutions.’
‘The Agreement on the EU–Türkiye Statement regarding the Migration Deal is considered a turning point in EU–Türkiye relations, as it divided opinions on whether it had been worth entering into an alliance with the other party at such a price. However, its strategic importance was intended to be significant.’
Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó of Hungary claimed that Hungary will not back outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s candidacy for NATO Secretary General since he had made comments about ‘bringing Hungary to its knees’ in the past, He also added that ‘if a threat is from the East, then maybe the Secretary General should also be from the East’.
Monday’s Foreign Affairs Council meeting was incredibly tense, with Péter Szijjártó coming under enormous pressure regarding the fourteenth sanctions package and the additional military and financial support to be provided to Ukraine. EU foreign ministers continue to criticize the Hungarian government for its pro-peace stance, which it has consistently maintained since the outbreak of the war.
There is a growing sense that the two right-wing political groups, Identity and Democracy (ID) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), are willing to form an alliance after the elections. In this context, Marine Le Pen, the de facto leader of the French National Rally, has extended an offer to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to join forces. The new alliance could result in the right-wing bloc becoming the second-largest group in the new European Parliament, surpassing the Socialists.
Incumbent conservative judge Andrew Pinson beat his liberal challenger John Barrow by 10 points in an election for a seat on the Supreme Court of Georgia last Friday. That is despite the fact that Barrow made abortion rights the centre message of the campaign, which is perceived as one of the strongest issues for Democrats in the 2024 presidential election.
The HDZ-led coalition won 34.4 per cent of the votes in the general election, while the Rivers of Justice got 25.4 per cent of the vote, with a turnout of 62.3 per cent. These results give a hint as to what the outcome of the upcoming European Parliament elections may be. (In the EP HDZ is part of the European People’s Party, while SDP is a member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D).) Precedent shows that if two elections are held shortly after each other the party that won the first election is likely to slightly improve its vote share in the subsequent election.
At the weekly government press briefing last week the Hungarian PM’s chief of staff, Minister Gergely Gulyás stated that Hungary would not enforce the ICC arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu. He declared that it is not appropriate to use a court as a political tool, and it should be remembered that the ‘utterly ruthless, disgraceful and despicable terrorist attack’ suffered by Israel was the root cause of everything that is happening in the Gaza Strip.
On Thursday, 23 May the Warsaw Institute of Poland organized an online panel discussion on the future of the Visegrad Group, focusing on issues such as the Russo-Ukrainian war and the EU integration of the West Balkans.
‘Energy security, in terms the consumer understands, needs to address three things: reliability, affordability, and acceptability, in that order. These terms apply to a nation state’s understanding of energy security, both because a citizenry not achieving these things will rapidly object and because a nation state is quickly made vulnerable by the instability that comes when energy is no longer reliable, affordable, or acceptable.’
‘Germany’s slow and opaque stance on helping Ukraine in its war against the Russian invasion can also be seen as reactive rather than proactive…One reason for Germany’s caution is of course a certain degree of self-consciousness—the country that produced Nazism wants to be seen as kind and respectful, not powerful or dominant. Yet all others know that it is indeed powerful, and interpret even Germany’s silence.’
The Lithuanian presidency began with Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė outlining the goals of the upcoming term. Firstly, she mentioned the importance of supporting Ukraine in defending itself against Russian aggression, which should be achieved by strengthening democratic institutions in Ukraine and providing further significant support for reconstruction. Secondly, she stressed that a higher level of accountability would be required in connection with international crimes. In this process, the CoE’s expertise should be utilized, for example, to establish a Special International Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.
According to Fanni Lajkó, an analyst at the Center for Fundamental Rights, Europe faces two paths in the upcoming June elections: succumbing to pro-war views or rising up to restore the European Union’s original mission as a peace project. The institute held a press conference on Friday, where the Director of EU Research, Attila Kovács, and Fanni Lajkó shared their insights on the latest lead candidate debate.
‘The history of European integration is in fact nothing more than the history of the power struggle of the EU institutions. The powers of the institutions at the core of the current EU have been in a constant state of flux since the beginning of the European project…’
Foreign pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted a conference in Budapest on Tuesday where Israel’s ambassador to Hungary Jakov Hadas-Handelsman was also speaking. At around the same time, anti-Israel graffiti flooded the Hungarian capital. For many months, such phenomena were unknown in Hungary, but now it seems that the conflict and hatred are being imported from abroad.
‘The ideological models that had emerged at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries…had transformed social thinking and humanity’s view of the world to such an extent that it was impossible to maintain and preserve the earlier, semi-feudal Europe. This in turn meant that ethnicity and nationality, previously considered less significant elements…became a determining factor, leading not only to an exploration of the historical past of a given community, in the search for national heroes, but also to a demand for political unification with ethnic or linguistic compatriots within a single country.’
Giorgia Meloni has made it her mission to unite the European right after the European elections, effectively opposing the left-wing political groups in the new European Parliament. However, this will be a very difficult task: although they agree on a number of key issues, the two right-wing groups are divided on several matters, most notably foreign policy.
‘When European elites long for a “Hamiltonian moment”, they imagine that a particular common financial necessity could be the spark that brings about a common political framework as well—hence the continuous return of talk of the “Hamiltonian moment” in discussing the EU’s attempts to deal with the eurozone crisis.’
Since 2013, migration pressure on Europe has become the new normal, and in recent years the situation has once again worsened: 2023 saw the highest number of illegal immigrants reaching Europe since 2016. Due to the worsening security situation in the Sahel region and the economic difficulties afflicting North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, nearly one million people applied for asylum in the EU.
‘Besides the less remote Iberian Peninsula, the Center for Fundamental Rights now runs a dedicated operation aimed towards the oft-neglected south of the Western hemisphere, amounting to twenty-two countries, nine time zones, two languages—and countless parties, think tanks, civic groups, and allies spread from the borderland Rio Grande down to the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. This empire of actionable ideas will grow by persuasion rather than force, not as a sovereign entity but as a loose constellation of like-minded partners comparing notes on their parallel journeys to power.’
Russia held its first three-day-long presidential election between 15–17 March 2024; 7 May marked the previous cabinet’s last day in office. The new appointments in the Russian cabinet are significant not only because they mark the Kremlin’s apparent preparation for a long war, but also because they provide a fresh insight into the power games played in Moscow.