The Black Sheep of the EU

The Black Sheep of the EU

At the beginning of July 2024, Hungary took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union (EU), which will last until the end of the year. Official Brussels is not surprised at all that the country’s idiosyncratic Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, immediately steps outside the imposed scenario for the union. One of his first actions is to undertake an uncoordinated “peacekeeping mission” aimed at stopping the war in Ukraine. Surprisingly, he visits Kyiv, and—oh my goodness!—Moscow and Beijing. This provokes furious anger among the upper echelon of bureaucrats in Brussels.

As a result, the Hungarian presidency is subjected to an unprecedented boycott. Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, orders her senior officials to skip a series of meetings organized by the Hungarian government. This act effectively calls into question not only the meaning of the Hungarian presidency but, more importantly, the very concept of rotating presidencies in the EU, as it becomes clear that they have no power if they can be ignored at the whims of European officials who allow themselves to circumvent and ultimately undermine these presidencies, turning them into mere ceremonial forms for business trips under super-luxurious and highly honored conditions.

The reality is even more brutal than it appears at first glance. Brussels cannot contain its malice over the fact that President Ursula von der Leyen and her loyal foreign minister (officially, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs of the EU), Josep Borrell, do not receive any reception of such rank in the mentioned capitals. Except in Kyiv, where they are welcomed for understandable reasons, in Beijing, for example, they are treated as third-rate officials, while in Ankara, the president of the European Commission is humiliated unconditionally. Regarding Moscow, it can be noted that the high Brussels bureaucracy has cut off its own paths due to its unprecedented anti-Russian, revanchist policy, where there is no trace of diplomacy. (See: The philosophy of war.com, Blog Bg from February 5, 2024.)

And how can the Brussels bureaucrats not be angry about what they perceive as Viktor Orbán’s “reckless” behavior—that he is treated as a significant factor while they are not?! However, in their anger, they miss something essential: the conditions for peace that Brussels (in particular) and the whole EU propose to the Russian president—restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity—do not correspond at all with Russia’s policy in the eastern region of Ukraine.

The truth is that in order to impose such conditions, especially in the third year of war, the EU and the USA must exert considerable effort to gain an appropriate form of authority to set such conditions.

And such a form of authority and adequacy has not been established! The war in Ukraine is not developing in favor of European aspirations and desires.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also in a rather unfavorable position, as he, like Ursula von der Leyen, adheres to an openly anti-Russian, revanchist policy. Through his foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, he laments that, in his attempts to mediate for peace in Ukraine, he encounters Vladimir Putin’s unwillingness “to even talk to him on the phone.” After making this absurd statement at a press conference with Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár, Annalena Baerbock repeats meaningless, contentless clichés intended for general consumption: that Vladimir Putin “sends signals in favor of war and destruction every day.”

Such statements, arising from a revanchist, anti-Russian background (Baerbock’s grandfather was a Nazi “defending” Europe from the USSR), carry very questionable moral value.

It is clear who provoked this war, for what purpose, and who should bear the responsibility for it. And that is by no means the “aggressor” Russia.

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