Two decades ago, it is highly unlikely that we imagined an EU like the one we live in today. There is no doubt that EU membership has brought countless values to our daily lives beyond economic catch-up: freedom to work, study, and travel, improved living standards, security and stability, respect for minority rights, and much more. But this is an EU that exists in a different geopolitical reality, with challenges that we would not have imagined twenty years ago. The EU is facing a series of crises that are not being effectively addressed by its current leaders. In the face of the EU’s federalist aspirations, Hungary is taking the geopolitical and security realities as a starting point. The country, therefore, supports a pro-peace policy, opposes the migrant quota, emphasizes conservative, family-centered values, and is fundamentally committed to a Europe of strong nations, and represents Hungary’s interests within the EU along these lines.

The EU has not become a great power in the geopolitical sense, nor has it made much progress in recent years towards becoming a great power in the geopolitical sense. Over the past decades, many ideas have been put forward in this regard, but basically, the EU has had two major options: an autonomous and geopolitically strong EU; or an EU that relies mostly on transatlantic cooperation. The current war conflicts are also deepening this kind of identity crisis in the EU: whereas the US used to express concern about the EU’s strategic autonomy, it is now more the lack of it that the US is criticizing. There is no adequate response to this search for identity, either in the form of a concrete strategy or a longer-term vision. Moreover, there is no real and coherent definition of what the EU is and what it wants to achieve – in other words, there is no strategy, even though integration and cohesion might make this possible. This kind of vacuum is to some extent filled by the conflict between those in favor of deeper unification and integration and those defending national sovereignty. Hungary is committed to a Europe of strong nations in this debate. The accession to the EU twenty years ago was not about giving up sovereignty, but about creating a Europe of strong nations by strengthening nation-states.

Europe has been a major player in the world economy for centuries, a place of discovery, industrial, technological, and economic development that has had a major impact on the rest of the world. Although this kind of development came to a halt, especially after the Second World War, a gradually unifying Europe was able to regain its role as an economic powerhouse. The establishment of the EU ensured the free movement of goods, capital, and people and the creation of a single market, which steadily increased the competitiveness of this area. The EU area has become a model of development-led growth. This has been further enhanced by the introduction of the euro, which has unlocked new competitiveness potential (see the elimination of currency conversion, reduced transaction costs, etc.). The euro has become the second most important currency in the world after the dollar.

At the same time, the EU’s role in the world economy has been gradually declining in recent times. The reasons for this are to be found both outside the EU and inadequate management of the problems arising within the EU. The EU’s competitiveness vis-à-vis emerging economies such as China, Brazil, and India is steadily declining, as these countries have a much more favorable investment climate. Similarly, the EU is lagging in technological innovation Internal causes include problems caused by an aging society, over-regulation, inadequate support systems, and the continued marginalization of development and innovation.

Relations between EU institutions also point to structural problems that could affect the functioning of the EU in the longer term. This includes, for example, the growing political influence of the European Parliament and its impact on cooperation with the Council. One of the very visible effects of this is that problems become politicized, which both makes decision-making more difficult and often results in double or multiple standards being applied to countries that disagree with the policy approach. One current example is the support for qualified majority voting in EU foreign and security policy decision-making. Although groups such as the ‘friendly’ group of nine Member States in favor of qualified majority voting (QMV) do not have a mandate, such initiatives could threaten the EU’s current decision-making in the long term. ‘Friends of QMV’ advocate qualified majority voting rather than unanimity voting in the common foreign and security policy, even though the vast majority of decisions are taken by majority voting, only rarely do they make leading news.

The biggest loss of weight has been in the case of the Commission, which has not been able to achieve very positive results recently. Although the Commission has the power of initiative vis-à-vis the Parliament, it has not used it recently. The European Parliament, on the other hand, controls the Commission and, if necessary, it can dismiss it. So, in terms of political power, the Commission has no relevant role currently either inside or outside the EU.

One of the great crises of the last 10 years of the EU was the migration crisis of 2015, during which the fault lines on immigration were drawn: most Western European countries, with former colonial and/or labor shortages, saw the changes brought about by the admission of migrants as desirable, while the historically different, typically Central European countries saw the changes as dangerous. Although the latest migration pact still leaves some unanswered questions, it is fair to say that there has been a major shift in European public discourse compared to the original quota proposals, partly due to the early agenda-setting activities of the Visegrad countries, which have been backed by some major southern countries such as Italy and Greece. Although the future of the institutional reform on asylum is still in doubt, the EU’s success is certainly the ability of Member States to protect the EU’s common borders, and Hungary has a big role to play in this.

The Ukrainian-Russian war has shown that peace on the continent is not guaranteed, and the EU’s arms industry is seriously lagging behind that of the US, for example. Hungary’s response to the security situation is to commit itself to offering pragmatic solutions and to strive for the strongest possible strategic autonomy. One of the most important elements in this is to emphasize a pro-peace policy and not to support Ukraine with arms.

The ideological fault lines that not only have an impact in political terms but also in the daily lives of the people who live here are now an integral part of the current state of the EU. Not only the federalist-sovereigntist conflict already mentioned, but also socio-political issues such as gender, woke culture, or the social problems arising from digitalization (loss of individual autonomy, mental illness, etc.). To these challenges, the European elite often provides exclusive responses and distances itself from those who do not respect these exclusive responses.

The Brussels elite is also unable to formulate well-defined goals or strategies, and this has repercussions on our image of the EU itself. How the European elite portrays the EU itself will have an impact on how the EU will look in 5, 10, or 20 years Hungary is a committed member of the EU, but at the same time critical of its processes, an attitude that is not intended to undermine the foundations of the EU, but on the contrary to strengthen and stabilize them.

 

Written by Ágnes Vass & Péter Stepper

This article was originally published in Hungarian at Növekedés.