‘Imagine if the annulment of a national election result that took place in Romania in 2024 had happened in Hungary…It is not hard to imagine what kind of media coverage it would have gotten had the highest court in Hungary made such a decision…The Western media’s favourite terms, “authoritarian”, “totalitarian”, and “right-wing fascist” would have been used like machine gun fire.’
Italy has joined Belgium, Bulgaria and Malta in resisting the European Commission’s plan to use frozen Russian assets as collateral for a €210 billion loan to Ukraine, warning of profound legal and financial risks. The pushback intensifies scrutiny of Brussels’s decision to invoke emergency powers to sidestep expected vetoes from Hungary and Slovakia.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is riding an extraordinary wave, securing its first Scottish council seat and overtaking Labour to become Britain’s largest party by membership. The developments, both hailed as historic moments, underscores the accelerating collapse of the UK’s traditional two-party system.
Ursula von der Leyen claims only voters decide a nation’s leaders—yet recent EU actions tell a very different story. From Romania’s annulled election to Germany’s institutional crackdown on AfD and France’s judicial assault on Marine Le Pen, the Union shows an increasingly authoritarian instinct that undermines democratic choice.
‘For the Budapest-centric circles I move in, the strategy paper consists mainly of familiar assumptions and positions.’
POLITICO Brussels reports that Belgium may soon be treated like Hungary—isolated, ignored and punished—simply for refusing Ursula von der Leyen’s EUR 165 billion Ukraine loan scheme. The message is unmistakable: in today’s EU, disagreement is no longer tolerated, and the system is shifting toward open coercion.
‘Some argue, however, that the EU’s “solidarity” pool is nothing but a punishment for those countries that handled migration well over the years.’
The EU has spent the past decade dismissing Hungary’s warnings about migration and sovereignty. Now Washington under Trump is sounding the same alarm, urging Europe to stop its downward spiral—but Brussels responds with indignation instead of introspection, accelerating its decline.
‘As part of the high-level meetings, Hungary and Türkiye also convened the first-ever session of the Hungarian–Turkish Consultation Mechanism, bringing together the foreign ministers, defence ministers and national security officials of both countries—a format Türkiye reserves only for its closest partners.’
The Danube Institute launched its new Turkic Western Engagement Initiative (TWEI) in Budapest on Tuesday with a high-profile conference exploring how the West and the Turkic world can deepen cooperation amid growing geopolitical volatility, with particular emphasis on Hungary’s strategic bridging role.