Leader of the “European People’s Party” Manfred Weber sent a letter to the European Commission President fearmongering that Hungary’s decision to expand its “national card” program to Russians and Belarusians threatens the EU’s security and could lead to more espionage from those two. The Hungarian spokesman condemned this attack as hypocritical since it’s Eurocrats like Weber who promote “open borders” policies and reaffirmed that all “national card” applicants must undergo security checks.
Weber’s letter was then followed by EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson officially calling on Hungary to explain their decision to include Russians and Belarusians into heir “national card” program. Her letter built upon his fearmongering but added a new spin to it by also claiming that it “could lead to a de facto circumvention” of EU sanctions. Few among the public care all that much about sanctions violations though, instead remaining much more influenced by conspiracy theories about Russian spies.
This latest scandal comes amidst three others: 1) the EU plans to boycott the foreign affairs summit that Hungary will host later this month; 2) Ukraine cut off some Russian oil exports to Hungary that were exempted from EU sanctions; and 3) Poland finally split with Hungary over its continued ties with Russia. All three of these were preceded by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s peace mission to Kiev, Moscow, Beijing, DC, and Mar-a-Lago to explore the possibility of brokering a ceasefire in the Ukrainian Conflict.
It’s therefore obvious that the abovementioned scandals and the latest one that was just concocted by Weber are all designed to punish Hungary for breaking ranks with the West’s pro-war policy. The most recent scandal is meant to add an element of urgency to multilateral efforts to more formally punish this wayward country on the false basis that it’s about to tacitly let Russian spies in the EU. The most extreme scenario is threatening to suspend Hungary from the Schengen Zone.
These four developments prove the existence of a concerted Hybrid War on Hungary that’s being waged to pressure it into abandoning its peace mission and then capitulate to its practitioners’ demands to reverse course by arming Ukraine. The Ukrainian scandal represents serious economic pressure while the foreign affairs summit and Polish ones are political pressure. As for the latest “national card” scandal, Weber’s innuendo that Orban is deliberately undermining EU security represents a narrative escalation.
His adversaries are no longer beating around the bush about him supposedly being a threat but are now explicitly describing him as such, which is meant to justify more concerted pressure with the immediate goal being to coerce him into rescinding Russian and Belarusians’ newfound “national card” eligibility. They know that Orban likely won’t budge though since he’s a principled sovereigntist so this move can thus be interpreted as creating the pretext for more meaningful economic and political escalations.
This insight brings everything around to the extreme scenario that was mentioned above regarding threats to suspend Hungary from the Schengen Zone. While unlikely to actually happen, it can’t be ruled out that leading political figures might still openly discuss this as yet another form of pressure. In that event, nobody can predict how Hungary would react, but it’ll depend on whether its leadership believes that such threats are serious or just a bluff to get it to enact some of the demanded policy concessions.
In any case, the importance of this latest fake news narrative about Hungary supposedly preparing to tacitly let Russian spies into the EU is that it adds a new dimension to their already complex crisis, which imbues the bloc with a false sense of urgency to further escalate its pressure campaign. The outcome of this crisis will either lead to the post-national West eroding more of Hungary’s sovereignty or the EU’s proudest nation-state successfully holding its own and inspiring like-minded states to follow its lead.
