Hungary, represented by its Prime Minister Viktor Orban, took over the rotating six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union in July 1, and promptly decided to do something unconventional: actual work. So out came the knives.
Back in 2022, the most memorable thing that France’s Emmanuel Macron did while in the role was make a logo for his EU presidency that incorporated his own initials. The benefit to the French and European people was fantastic – as in, it exists in fantasy.
For his EU presidency meeting in France, Macron stood alongside unelected European Commission bureaucracy president “Queen” Ursula von der Leyen, as they championed issues like climate change, digital transition, and the EU military industrial complex (er, the “EU Defence Union”). They were only too happy to serve up typical globalist fare for their fellow elites to gobble down. But these same folks are now gagging on Orban’s chosen agenda: peace.
Orban announced that Hungary’s EU presidency meeting would take place at the end of August in Budapest, addressing thorny global conflicts that present a challenge to the EU. Bloc elites object because peace is supposed to come from taking short showers and sweltering without air conditioning to stick it to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Until now, the establishment figured that it could control Orban, if not through threats of withholding EU funds, then through outright manipulation. Like when, according to Politico, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz managed to get him to dip out of a vote last December on starting EU accession talks for Ukraine by convincing the Hungarian leader that it would result in a win-win. So, while Orban was in the hallway, the other EU leaders rammed through the vote, avoiding his veto, and subsequently celebrating their own manipulated unanimity.
But when Orban took over this new EU role, he really dipped out........