The Hungarian Rhapsodies: The Conflict of Adventurism and Professionalism in the European Union Presidency

The Hungarian Presidency of the European Union (EU) in the first half of 2011 was the third in the Spanish–Belgian–Hungarian (SBH) team Presidency. There have always been many good arguments for a given rotating Presidency to claim that it has taken place in the most difficult period in EU history. The Hungarian Presidency was no exception, but as the first of the new Member States to hold the position under the new Lisbon rules and coming at the time of the ongoing global crisis, there was considerable justification for such a claim. There is no doubt, however, that the Hungarian Presidency was dominated by the conflict between domestic and EU policies, and a deeper conflict between the political adventurism of the government and the professionalism of experts and the state administration. Both the team Presidency preparations of the common programme and the Hungarian domestic preparations to ensure administrative capacity was up to speed began in earnest early in 2007 in a mood of so far, so good. The SBH team Presidency drafted some original priorities and established a good co-operation framework that could be structured into four themes: the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty with a changing role for the team/rotating Presidencies; the elaboration of the Europe 2020 Strategy with the extension of cohesion policy to territorial cohesion and with the inclusion of new policies such as energy security, global climate change and the ‘innovation triangle’; the contribution to the preparations for the next multi-annual financial perspectives and to the reform of budgeting in the spirit of a ‘policy-driven budget’; and a globalization-cum-regionalization policy created by strengthening both the global role of the EU and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) with the promotion of the pre-accession process in the Western Balkan region and the intensification of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) (see Council of the European Union, 2009). These priorities were accepted as general outlines and discussed in a series of trilateral negotiations and conferences. The State Secretaries of European Affairs met regularly and built up a strong intergovernmental co-ordination mechanism. In this optimistic preparatory period the three countries concerned cherished the idea that the SBH would be the first real, well prepared and co-operatively working team Presidency.1 The institutional changes introduced by the Lisbon Treaty (LT) radically transformed the role of the team Presidencies. However, the drastic change for the SBH team Presidency came in late 2009 not with the predictable transformations in the institutional architecture, including the entry into force of the Permanent President of the European Council, but with the shift in EU priorities towards economic crisis management. Thus, the original programme was abandoned and economic governance dominated the agenda. The first half of 2011 was a particularly stormy period in EU history. Hungary took over the Presidency at the moment that a new wave of crisis crashed onto the European ship of state, with many more to follow during Hungary's time at the helm. This sense of deepening crisis pervaded the Hungarian Presidency, also feeding into its domestically driven turning points. Accordingly, attention shifted from the original programme to tackling the economic crisis. Altogether, this was a very eventful, turbulent six-month period, in which firm EU political leadership was needed to react quickly to the newly emerging substantive issues. Hungary could only be an active junior partner and a helping hand for the European Council. The collapse of original priorities and the marginalization of the team/rotating Presidencies first became clear at the February 2010 informal summit where the Greek crisis was high on the agenda. It became evident that the problems of economic crisis management could only be solved at the European Council level, which the big powers (the revived Franco-German engine) dominated and the new President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, showed real political leadership. Actually, due to the dual effect of the global crisis and the EU institutional reforms, the former priorities were marginalized or downgraded. Given the tremendous burden of crisis management mostly orchestrated by the European Council and the major powers, the challenge of evaluating the Hungarian Presidency requires us to separate the achievements and failures of the EU in general during this period from the actions by, or the special performance of, the Hungarian Presidency. In fact, the deep change in the team Presidency's profile was also caused by the deterioration of the domestic situation in all three countries concerned – first of all in Spain right at the beginning of the SBH team Presidency (Heywood, 2011). The finalization of the Hungarian Presidency programme was delayed until December 2010 since the need for a radical modification of the agenda was seen already at the end of the Belgian Presidency (Drieskens, 2011). The Hungarian government realized that the most important EU priorities were the protection of the euro and the elaboration of the rules for new economic governance. Thus, the Hungarian Presidency focused on crisis management and economic governance – that is, shifting the focus to the Commission's proposal for a six-pack of economic regulation and the ensuing key issues of the reinforcement of economic policy co-ordination. This top priority demanded the softening up, scaling down or emptying out of former priorities, revising the original design of the 18-month programme beyond recognition. Although the Hungarian priorities reflected verbally the original ones to a great extent, after a careful review of the basic policy areas Hungary had to abandon a great deal of related issues. So finally, the Hungarian Presidency indicated the following four priorities for the first half of 2011 as summarized by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, János Martonyi: The Presidency Program is built on four priorities, with the human factor – Europe in service of its citizens – as the common link. The four priority areas are: 1) Promoting growth by strengthening economic governance and concentrating on job creation and social inclusion; 2) Strengthening our common policies by making them more efficient and competitive, while preserving underlying fundamental values to enhance cohesion in Europe; 3) Bringing Europe closer to its citizens; and 4) Moving forward with the enlargement process in a credible and responsible manner. Our overall aim as we assume the Presidency is to help create an economically, socially, politically and institutionally stronger and more viable Europe. ‘Strong Europe’– this is our motto. (Martonyi, 2011; see in detail HMFA, 2010, 2011)2 Actually, the real Hungarian top priority was the maintenance of cohesion policy in general and the promotion of the Danube Strategy (DRS) in particular. The renewed cohesion policy as a real priority was well suited to general Hungarian preferences in the EU and it received strong support from the other new Member States as well. The DRS was accepted on 13 April 2011 by the General Affairs Council with relative ease. Finally, the June 2011 summit endorsed this initiative, although it remains to be seen how it can be promoted in practice. Given the fact that the early drivers were the southern provinces of Germany and Austria, which are still strong supporters of this project, it may have a good chance of being implemented. The support for DRS fitted well to the two Hungarian vital sub-priorities of its enlargement/widening portfolio: West Balkans and EaP, especially to conclude the accession talks with Croatia. It is true that in ‘the globalization-cum-regionalization’ programme establishing strategic partnerships for better global governance is a task more suitable for the European Council, whereas the team Presidencies can cope more with the problems of regionalizing the EU neighbourhood.3 The SBH team Presidency proves that there is close relationship in each rotating Presidency between domestic developments and Presidency performance. Even earlier, as Beneš and Karlas (2010, p. 71) have noted in the Czech case: ‘The bleak domestic context undermined the whole Presidency’. Indeed, the performance of the Hungarian Presidency can only be understood in its domestic context. The new Fidesz government, which took office in May 2010 with a large, two-thirds majority, followed a domestic programme of ‘strong government’. Thus, the ‘Strong Europe’ slogan of the Hungarian Presidency was imported from home and indicated the dominance of its domestic policy over EU policies. In fact, it was much more a message to the Hungarian audience than to the EU population. This attitude of the Hungarian government provoked a series of conflicts and controversies in the EU. The core issue was, as the former foreign minister noted, that ‘Prime Minister Orbán could not decide whether the EU was a friend or an enemy’ (Balázs, 2011, p. 9). At the annual conference of Hungarian ambassadors at the end of August 2010 Orbán did not mention the forthcoming EU Presidency, and on 15 March in his speech commemorating the 1848 revolution, he ‘compared the influence of the EU to the oppression of the Habsburg Empire and Soviet dictatorship’ (Balázs, 2011, p. 9). The EU flag was missing at his public performances and at those of government in general. The two stormy visits of Orbán to the European Parliament (EP) on 19 January and 5 July 2011 highlighted the controversial character of the EU profile of the Fidesz government.4 The Hungarian Presidency endured a rough start because of the efforts of the Hungarian government in establishing its strong state by weakening the checks and balances system of democratic institutions. On 20 December 2010 a new media law was passed, which led to a collision with many European actors, including the Commission, who thought it was a threat to press freedom. Despite subsequently passing small amendments, the media law was condemned in an EP resolution on 10 March. Its compatibility with European regulations and values was discussed in both EU and domestic circles, and this debate led to a questioning of the democratic credentials of the government. As the foreign minister formulated it in soft terms with real understatement: ‘Criticism about the Media Law has made the government's work more difficult’ (Martonyi, 2011). In fact, the European press covered Hungarian developments extensively with an avalanche of criticism: ‘Opinions on the form or substance of the law varied, but there is a broad agreement that the backlash that followed was a distraction to the Hungarian Presidency's agenda’ (Armitage et al., 2011, pp. 34–5).5 Similarly, the other steps taken by the government to weaken the democratic system of institutions, particularly reducing the competences of the Constitutional Court, provoked negative reactions in EU circles. Moreover, the new Constitution was passed in April 2011 in the face of heavy criticism from EU partners and the Venice Commission. Altogether, the Presidency was overshadowed by international concerns in general over the efforts of the Hungarian government through the new constitution to curb the system of checks and balances and in particular to restrict media freedom. However, ‘Making Europe Work’ is still the main job of the Presidencies, and Hungary performed well in the role of the honest broker in administering EU affairs. Thus, there was a big contrast between the political activities of the government and the professional activities of the administration: whilst the general view in Brussels and other EU capitals gave a positive evaluation of Hungarian experts, there was ‘quite a different judgment about the performance of the Government of Hungary’ (Balázs, 2011, pp. 5, 7). Indeed, the Hungarian team of experts did a good job in the routine work of crisis management from the back seat and it managed well the rolling and incoming issues. Of course, the government's activities were in the limelight and they gave a generally negative impression, but it would be one-sided to evaluate the performance of the Hungarian Presidency only from this aspect. The Hungarian Presidency took place seven years after entry, so the fact that Hungary was a new Member State holding the Presidency for the first time was not important in this regard since it had already enough experience and expertise in the EU with a good administrative capacity to support the Presidency team. The acid test for EU Presidencies is crisis management of unexpected events. Two major sudden events disturbed the Hungarian Presidency with their severe and durable spillovers: first, the earthquake followed by tsunamis in Japan; and second, the Arab uprisings culminating in the civil war in Libya. The first event provoked debates on the sensitive issue of nuclear power stations in EU energy policy, but did not concern the main line of the Presidency. However, the second event generated a huge migration wave, which proved to be a real stress test for the Schengen system. This contributed to the crisis of Schengen as a whole and the goal of enlargement to Bulgaria and Romania consequently suffered a major setback. This caused a serious problem for the Hungarian Presidency since the entry of Bulgaria and Romania was an important issue for Hungary. In December 2010 the German and French governments announced their reservations on extending Schengen to Bulgaria and Romania, but the Hungarian government neglected these warnings, which proved that political considerations, again, prevailed over expert views. In several ways this deep conflict between the political and administrative roles characterized the entire Presidency. It has been echoed many times by analysts because they have considered that the Hungarian Presidency was ‘a professionally administered Presidency’, but this success in managing the EU policies contrasts with the ‘parochial domestic politics’ (Armitage et al., 2011, pp. 34–5). On one side, ‘Budapest conducted its first EU presidency with quite professionalism and effectiveness, focussing on strengthening EU economic governance (the Six-Pack legislation), Roma inclusion and finalizing accession negotiations with Croatia’ (Armitage et al., 2011, p. 51), but on the other side it neglected the European values that culminated in the media legislation and the new ‘octroi’-type constitution as dangerous deviations from democratic norms. In the last analysis, in 2011 ‘Hungary was backsliding’, which produced finally ‘Hungary's illiberal, managed democracy’ (Gati, 2012, pp. 66, 71). Thus, during the Presidency and afterwards the Hungarian government was under pressure from growing international criticism due to this deep conflict between the political and administrative roles. The Hungarian authorities, however, refused the separation of political and administrative roles in the evaluation of the Hungarian Presidency and declared that it was successful in both respects. The prime minister in his final comments concluded that Hungary did a good job in both, and accomplished all the tasks of the Presidency (Orbán, 2011). The year 2011 was that of the two central European Presidencies: Hungary and Poland. Some analysts have argued that it was an important time for pushing common regional interests. They have referred to the ‘growing importance of the V4’ (Visegrad Four) as ‘a significant tool of advancing Central European aspirations within the EU’, since all countries concerned have ‘a vested interest in sustaining a strong European Cohesion Policy’ (Kron, 2011, pp. 1, 3). However, other analysts such as Armitage and his co-authors have stated that although they were not able to exert a lasting impact on EU policy in general, these countries were rather successful in particular policies like fostering West Balkan integration with the accession of Croatia and promoting the EU Roma integration strategy. For the central European region as a whole, the Danube Strategy matters first of all, and its adoption was indeed a big success for the Hungarian Presidency (Armitage et al., 2011). Thus, the ‘Presidency effect’ (Haughton, 2010, pp. 18, 21) on the central European region must have been slightly positive, primarily because of the Polish Presidency,6 but on Hungary it was at least ambiguous. For the Hungarian government, the effect was clearly negative since it came at the worst time when the government wanted to consolidate its rule for a long time by changing the whole constitutional set-up of Hungary to a more restricted, guided democracy. The government had a two-thirds majority at home and made all steps to entrench its powers, to capture the state and to weaken the checks and balances system. Therefore, it perceived the EU mostly as an obstacle to the big manoeuvre of consolidating its power and responded to all EU warnings with irritation (‘leave us alone – no interference in domestic affairs’). Thus, given the primacy of domestic transformation, for the Hungarian government the EU was only a disturbing factor. In general, the increased international attention, both from politicians and the press, coming together with the Presidency role being confronted with the strong domestic position of government, showed only its external vulnerability. For the Hungarian population the Presidency was not so important: right before it started the majority of people in Hungary did not know about the Presidency and it was not until just at the end that they realized what it entailed. The main reason is that the Presidency period was dominated by wide ranging socio-economic and political processes that I have termed ‘post-accession crisis’. In the late 2000s the Hungarians were frustrated by the problems of the last 20 years, so they therefore supported the populist Fidesz with a large (53 per cent) majority which resulted in a two-thirds parliamentary majority. However, when the Orbán government weakened both democracy and economy, people became even more frustrated and turned more and more against the government, with 80 per cent considering that ‘things are going in the wrong direction’. Paradoxically, the EU became important later for the increasing opposition confronting the government. The recurring mass manifestations referred to the EU warnings and chanted pro-EU slogans against the government. The end result of the Hungarian Presidency was an extreme polarization between the pro-EU democratic opposition and the Eurosceptic (in some cases, anti-EU) government that was further deepened.7 The SBH Presidency wanted to be the first real team Presidency, working in close co-operation, but failed due to external reasons and domestic processes. The ‘Strong Europe’ slogan of the Hungarian Presidency might have suited an EU coping with crisis management, but contrasted to a great with the capacity of the Hungarian government to to this goal during its Presidency. The performance of the Presidency was more controversial than so it to be in its the between the political and administrative roles into This has been formulated in the final evaluation of the former foreign As as Brussels was of EU and Member States better that a Presidency of an and government in the of the Council was coming to an of the good professional work of the experts, Hungary has not been a real at top the of the This was and the general of Hungary in the is after the EU Presidency than it to be (Balázs, 2011, pp. 5,