Viktor Orban is playing poker in Brussels these days. By blocking decision-making on important issues such as European Union enlargement, Sweden’s proposed membership in NATO, and the European budget, the Hungarian prime minister has been exasperating colleagues from other EU member states. This week, 27 national leaders have to travel to a summit in Brussels for one main reason: Orban’s continued refusal to agree to a 50 billion euro ($54.2 billion) financial aid package for Ukraine.
Viktor Orban is playing poker in Brussels these days. By blocking decision-making on important issues such as European Union enlargement, Sweden’s proposed membership in NATO, and the European budget, the Hungarian prime minister has been exasperating colleagues from other EU member states. This week, 27 national leaders have to travel to a summit in Brussels for one main reason: Orban’s continued refusal to agree to a 50 billion euro ($54.2 billion) financial aid package for Ukraine.
Orban’s tactics, however, are not very surprising when seen in historic perspective. The use of blackmail has been part of the Hungarian political playbook for centuries. In the Habsburg Empire, which Hungary belonged to until its collapse at the end of the First World War in 1918, it behaved in a similar way—and this included taking the common budget hostage.
For those wondering how the EU should deal with Orban in the future and whether he will ever stop being so difficult, this historical parallel is particularly instructive.
(Spoiler: He will not stop being difficult.)
Hungarians were a stubborn people in Habsburg times, too. Of all the nations and languages and religious groups within the multinational empire, they were easily the most demanding. They knew that Emperor Franz Joseph (1830-1916) wanted to prevent the empire from falling apart at almost all cost and would go far to accommodate them.
In the mid-19th century, when Hungary was the empire’s largest grain producer, the Hungarians even stopped food production to the rest of the empire for several years, producing just enough flour to be able to feed themselves. In what was called the Passive Resistance movement, Hungarians also stopped paying taxes and boycotted public offices.
This was their reaction to the harsh way that Vienna had squashed their political rebellion during Europe’s revolutionary years in 1848-1849. Their main demand was far-reaching autonomy. And sure enough, in the end, their civil disobedience was effective: In 1867, the empire was transformed into the so-called Dual Monarchy, a kind of alliance of two sovereign states, Austria and Hungary, each with far-reaching powers within the empire. From then on, the Hungarians were allowed practical self-rule on matters such as education and health care in their half of the empire (which also included present-day Croatia, Slovakia, and Romania). Foreign policy and defense, however, remained federal. There, the kaiser was firmly in charge.
Many historians agree that the Hungarians got the best deal of all constituent parts in the empire because of their stubbornness and tough negotiating tactics. In the Double Monarchy, Hungary prospered. Yet it was never satisfied and always pushed—or rather squeezed—the emperor for more.
In one instance, just like today, Hungary took part of the Habsburg budget hostage in order to get what it wanted: the dismantling of the federal army, which the Hungarians considered a thorn in their side. “Hungary’s integration in the EU has not effaced [Habsburg] memories that often come up and are hardly understood by West-Europeans,” French historian Catherine Horel writes in her 2021 book Histoire de la Nation Hongroise; des premiers Magyars à Viktor Orbán (or History of the Hungarian Nation: From the First Hungarians to Viktor Orban).
The Hungarians saw the imperial army as an occupational force. They wanted to have their own army. Because the emperor refused their demand, they tried to undo some of the army’s crucial underpinnings instead. For instance, they detested the federal language law that stipulated that officers and soldiers (Czechs, Slovenes, etc.) could speak their mother tongues while on duty. At the time of the Dual Monarchy, no fewer than 13 languages were spoken in the empire.
To the emperor, who spoke many of those languages more or less fluently, multilingualism was the spirit of the multinational empire. Among themselves, soldiers often spoke German, but this was by no means compulsory. Hungary detested this practice, too. In its half of the empire, only 40 percent of the people spoke Hungarian, or Magyar. But immediately after the Ausgleich of 1867—the compromise that established the Dual Monarchy—the Hungarians introduced a law forcing everyone to use Hungarian.
Non-Hungarian schools, for instance, were closed. While the Austrian half of the empire became more liberal and decentralized over time, Hungary did the opposite in its half: Everything was centralized and Magyarized. “There were hardly any representatives of the national minorities in the Hungarian Parliament (where the language was, of course, Magyar),” Habsburg expert Steven Beller writes in his book The Habsburg Monarchy, 1815-1918.
In 1903, the Hungarian parliament launched an attack on the imperial language law by refusing to approve the military budget. Just like in today’s EU, Hungary had a veto over the budget.
The emperor was furious. At that time, France, tsarist Russia, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire—the powers surrounding the Habsburg Empire—were conducting an arms race. They were spending 3 percent to 4 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. This worried the emperor a great deal. Habsburg weaponry was outdated. If war came, his empire could soon be outgunned. So, Franz Joseph implored Hungary, which had tens of thousands of soldiers in the imperial army, to behave more responsibly in the face of these serious international threats.
But the Hungarians did what they often do when everyone puts pressure on them—dig in. This is exactly how they behave nowadays in Brussels: The more that collective pressure piles up on Orban, the more the Hungarian self-image seems to confirm that they are on their own.
“We always tend to go against the rest of the world,” Hungarian ambassador Anna Siko explained a few years ago in a lively discussion on the parallels between the Habsburg Empire and the EU. “We always create tension and make other people’s lives difficult, because we need to prove every day who we are.” The reason, according to her, is that the Hungarian “allergy to others telling us what to do … makes us wild and very undiplomatic.”
Diplomats and analysts in Brussels say they are not sure what Orban is really after. His goal posts seem to shift all the time. One of the things that Orban certainly wants is to get European subsidies that Brussels currently withholds—approximately 20 billion euros ($21.7 billion)—because of Hungary’s rampant corruption and its violations of the rule of law. In order to get those funds, he blocks everything that comes along: Swedish NATO membership, the financial and military aid package for Ukraine, or the reappointment of the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. The more vital the issue for other member states, the better.
In 1903, the emperor managed to break Hungary’s blockade with an unusual bluff: He suddenly presented a new, surprisingly liberal electoral law that gave minorities considerably more voting rights. This law, Franz Joseph announced, was to take effect in the entire empire. Budapest, hating enhanced minority rights even more than the imperial army’s language law, promptly approved the budget that it had previously blocked. Soon enough, of course, the emperor’s electoral law with enhanced minorities rights was taken off the table, too.
Following this analogy, could other 26 EU member states perhaps break the standoff with Hungary on the budget by proposing something that Orban hates more than sending 50 billion euros to Ukraine?
There is probably only one thing that would displease Hungary’s prime minister more than missing out on EU subsidies: being deprived of his voting rights in the EU Council (a procedure contained in Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union). According to diplomats who spoke with Politico, this nuclear option is currently being discussed among the other member states. However, chances that it will be used seem slim. Some national leaders apparently fear that if it is used against Orban now, it could be used against them tomorrow.
And so the 26 member states seem condemned to muddling through with Hungary. This explains why Orban, while lambasting the European Union every day, does not want an exit from the EU: He is far more powerful inside the EU than he would be outside it. He uses membership as leverage.
This is exactly what the Hungarians did in the Habsburg Empire: By being obnoxious, they obtained the best deals of all. But can you guess who left last, when the empire collapsed and all the nations had departed one by one? Exactly: It was Hungary.
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