BRUSSELS — Senior government ministers from Ireland, Luxembourg and Belgium took a very public swipe at Hungary on Tuesday, raising questions about whether Prime Minister Vitkor Orbán’s stridently nationalist cabinet respects European Union values and standards.
Hungary took over the 27-nation bloc’s rotating presidency in July. Orbán immediately made a surprise trip to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, angering several of his EU counterparts, who insisted that the Hungarian leader did not represent them.
“I will ask also my colleague (European Affairs Minister János Bóka) if tomorrow he plans a trip to Moscow, because this seems to be a habit for Hungarian politicians,” Luxembourg Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel said at a meeting in Budapest.
Beyond its ties with Russia, Orbán’s government has irritated its EU partners by promoting hostility to migrants and LGBTQ+ rights, and by controlling public media. Millions of euros in EU funds have also been frozen over concerns about democratic backsliding in Hungary.
Bettel, his Belgian counterpart Hadja Lahbib and Irish European Affairs Minister Jennifer Carroll McNeill said that they had held joint meetings with members of the Hungarian media, civil society and LGBTQ+ representatives ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, which Bóka chaired.
“This is extremely important to us in Ireland: human rights, fundamental freedoms, rule of law,” Carroll McNeill said. “I’m pleased to be here with my colleagues to just further discuss the rule of law and the concerns that we have and as they relate to the future of Europe.”
The ministers made their statements directly to a Hungarian TV camera, without prompting from reporters. It was an unusual and potentially embarrassing public display for Hungary, given that EU member countries rarely criticize each other in public.
Lahbib said she would send a message that “the Hungarian presidency should be ambitious, that it works to unite, to build bridges between the 27 European Union member states.” She urged Budapest to lift its veto on EU funds helping to supply weapons to Ukraine.
Many EU countries have been sending lower-level officials to meetings hosted by Hungary in protest at its conduct. Last week, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also used his convening powers to shift a gathering of the bloc’s foreign ministers from Budapest to Brussels.
At Tuesday’s meeting, things were taken to a new level.
“For me it was important to be in Budapest today. You know, big questions: do we come, don’t we come, should we come, is it good to come, is it better to boycott,” Bettel mused. “Not being here would, I think, be an error. But being here means also to be loud.”
Bóka played down the tensions, saying that the ministers had informed him of their meetings and that he saw no problem with this.
He said that more than half of the member countries were represented at senior level, although he conceded that the EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, had not sent one of its policy commissioners as it usually does.
“The atmosphere of today’s council reflected a sense of cooperation, and a willingness on the part of member states to cooperate with the Hungarian presidency, and I welcome this,” Bóka told reporters after the meeting had concluded.
Hungary’s mandate at the EU helm ends on Dec. 31.