Inside Magyar’s grand bargain with the EU

Good morning, it's Tuesday the 14th of April and this is the Brussels Playbook podcast. The vibing Brussels today cautiously optimistic. From the EU's point of view at least it's finally seen off Hungary's Victor Orbán, thought on its sides in 2010 and it thinks that this means it'll make imposing sanctions on Russia and sending money to Ukraine a whole lot easier. But is it really that straightforward? And also on the podcast today we talk about making the EU bigger, welcoming in new countries. The Commission once said but many EU leaders are skeptical of even starting the debate because they think voters might punish them. And lastly, cheese. Hello me. There's been an outbreak of a highly contagious disease in Cyprus and that's having a disastrous effect on production and you won't be surprised to learn that on a divided island it's fast becoming political. I'm Ian Wyshardt and with me today is our Chief Foreign Correspondent, Nick Vinnikor. Hello Nick. Hi, good to be here. And if I were Zoya I'd now ask you what your favourite European cheese is. Because I think Hulumi is utterly disgusting. Well I'll say Feta and keep it apolitical. I don't think there's any territorial dispute there. Well we'll talk about that later about disgusting Hulumi. First, this is the morning after the morning after landslide in Hungary. We talked a lot yesterday morning about what this means in Hungary. But when the party stop and the hangovers begin the question starts. So today let's examine what this means for the EU. Already in Brussels, Nick, people think things was up moving pretty fast, particularly on the 90 billion loan for Ukraine that Viktor Orban has been blocking. What do you think is going to happen? Yeah, this has been the number one concern for the EU is getting this veto lifted. Maja spoke about this extensively during his three hour press conference, incredibly long. He said Hungary would drop its veto and be coherent with previous commitments, even though Hungary would still not actually be paying into this game. So he said Hungary doesn't have enough money. And by previous commitments he means the fact that actually Hungary approved it, Orban approved it at the European Council in December and then went back on his word. Yeah, so he's signaling that he's going to uphold Orban's original word, but also keep Hungary outside of the scheme and that he doesn't want to be an obstacle anymore. And EU officials are already taking this to the bank as almost a veto complete. And he's being nice to Brussels because obviously he wants a lot of EU funds frozen. It looks like there's going to be this massive quid pro quo. We've been speaking to diplomats here in Brussels. They're saying what they want from Hungary is not only the unblocking of this low to Ukraine. It looks like that's pretty much a done deal probably, but also Hungary's agreement to open accession talks for Ukraine. That's really difficult for Maggiar probably. Also unblocking their veto from the Hungary's veto of the European peace facility, which is the EU funds for military support to Ukraine. And also the sanctions package against Russia. There's quite a lot of asks there. Yeah, you could call it a grand Budapest bargain or whatever you want. But what we've been getting from diplomats after the election result is that there's a window to strike here for the EU. It was a lot of leverage over Hungary. They badly need this money. And people are saying, well, rule of law is not linked to Ukraine, but they're saying, no, it's all linked. And they're expecting big gestures of goodwill in coming months. And this deadline with the RRF funds expiring will just evaporate in August, is raising the urgency in allowing them to raise pressure on Maggiar to do all these things. Yeah, the RRF fund is the recovery fund that the EU set up to get out of the pandemic and the boost economies. And I think it's 10 billion that's frozen in money to Hungary. I was just looking at the list actually. There's also 7 billion euros that they want to get in cohesion funding. There's the safe funds, which is the defense money. Hungary is expecting 16 billion. They've also got the fine that they get, which is 1 million euros a day because of what they did over asylum rule. So there's a lot to play for here. It's a massive backlog. Hungary's been ramping up the standoff with the EU for years. Starved of cash, one of the worst performing EU economies, partly because of this. And this is what Maggiar is going to want to turn around quickly. Yeah, and the relinks with Poland aren't there. And what the EU did with Poland when Donald Tusk became elected there. Peter Maggiar is not going to be Prime Minister for probably about a month in Hungary. But I noticed he's already talking that he's going to go to Warsaw to speak with Donald Tusk and learn from what he did. But that wasn't straightforward either. Was it the way that the EU thought it was going to release all these funds to Poland as soon as it was cut in, but it wasn't that straightforward? Yeah, they kind of jumped the gun in a way because the reforms got started and then a law and justice person was elected president and that kind of held up the whole process. So this time I think the commission will be looking for proof upfront that these laws can actually go through. And that might be a little bit tricky because there are urban loyalists in all these positions. Might take some time for them to kind of, for Maggiar to unwind everything that's been done. It's interesting you say that because we were really happy actually that yesterday we got a few WhatsApp's from listeners after we discussed the election results. And also a couple of questions for us. And one from Juliet in Germany asked that even though all ban is out, as you've just said then, Nick, how much of a system really remains. Obviously Fidesz is still there, it's still organised, it's still influential, they've been in power for 16 years. Very difficult to talk about clean break, isn't it? Absolutely. I think we can look at other places where a kind of purge has happened. Look at the United States, Donald Trump has been trying to remove opponents from key positions, taking years. Even with landslides, even with really powerful leaders, it's difficult to sweep away structures in a country. Right, so you wonder how can he prove to the commission that he can really push through all this legislation that he needs? That's going to be a big question. Yeah, and another comment we got from a listener yesterday from Marcelo from Italy asking if there was a risk that people, certainly the pro EU people, people in Brussels are getting a bit carried away here. He says, even though from his point of view there are obvious reasons for rejoicing, he says it feels a bit too good to be true. And because he's saying all-bandominated Hungarian politics for so long, we know he had such a firm grip on the state. So saying that all the urbanism has been swept away overnight is a bit of a simplification, isn't it? It is, on the other hand, I think it's a day to see the glass. How full if you're coming from the EU perspective, this is obviously the best possible election outcome from the EU perspective there could be. Peter Magas clearly not going to be a night in shining armour for the EU. I remember when all-band came in originally, he was seen as a shining light in the first place, and it doesn't always quite turn out as people expect, does it? No, absolutely, and his branded himself as a nationalist, a hungry first politician. So I don't think he's going to be boring, is it? Even without all-band European councils aren't going to be boring. No, if Hungary is no longer a key character for us, we'll have to. We'll have to get by the favour back. You can find something else, yeah. Okay, let's move on, Nick. What can you tell us about the Polish plumber? Well, the Polish plumber is kind of coming back into the conversation. For anyone who's old enough to remember, the last time that EU had a big wave of enlargement. 2004? 2004 brought in 10 countries. In the months leading up to that, there were a lot of public campaigns of people opposed to the enlargement, warning about essentially wage competition. But the symbol of this was the Polish plumber. Keep labour coming in from former Eastern European countries taking a lot of jobs, basically. Exactly. So the idea was that you were going to pick up the phone and call plumber, and you'd have a Polish man coming up taking the job of an honest Frenchman or German. I don't think that really panned out, but this has stuck with many politicians. And as we're now talking about another wave of enlargement, this is once again coming to the fore. All these anxieties who have been bringing new countries in. And I think the piece that you've written for us today talking about enlargement and obviously a big priority for Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission. But a lot of countries actually don't want to talk about enlargement right now, simply because they remember what that was like and how it feeds populism. And it actually is just too risky for them. Yeah, it's really interesting because it's been a big disconnect between Ursula von der Leyen's commission, which has been very forward about the enlargement agenda. She has talked about the EU expanding to 30 plus countries. And what we're talking about, we're not, because we're talking about Ukraine, obviously that's the big, that's the big contentious one. But also the sort of Montenegro in the queue. And Montenegro is first in line, but you've got Moldova right behind it. You've got the Western Balkans countries. You even have Norway and Iceland, we talked about, but potentially. Potentially some wealthy countries. And it's also seen as an argument for the EU. Well, you know, these countries want to join and we have to become a geopolitical union. That's what we've been hearing from Brussels, but it really jars against the national debate. And what we see now is that EU leaders, it's now up to them to move this process forward. There's only so much that commission can do, but they do not want to put this before their voters and have public debates about it. And there's some countries that need to have referendums, isn't there, as well? If a new country comes into the EU, remember that sort of growing up and seeing all the referendums in Ireland and Denmark. countries like that. Right, exactly. One country that kept coming back in these conversations was France. They have a presidential election next year. They would have to have a referendum certainly for a large country like Ukraine joining and it's just a sort of non-starter. And let's face it, if by then the national rally was in the presidency in France, you know, their natural supporters might be the ones that remember the Polish plumber debate more than any. Absolutely. That's what we're talking about here. Yeah, yeah. I think the idea is, well, if you put this, you're giving them a giant gift, a giant talking point in their campaign and so far in Manuel Macron has been extremely reluctant to do that. So what's the next step, Nick, because they were supposed to talk about this at the informal European Council in Cyprus later this month, weren't they? That's not on the agenda from what we're hearing. Yep, that's what we're understanding that it has been replaced by other priorities, so no big powwow about enlargement. And you know, why would the leaders have to speak about enlargement? This is a process that's managed by the commission. You open and close negotiation clusters, but at some point you have to talk about the contract on what terms do you enter the EU? And that's a discussion that would have to be among leaders saying, well, for Ukraine, perhaps for 20 years, we're not going to give you agricultural subsidies, for instance. That's something that needs to be discussed at leaders level. But what we've seen is that's where the discussion ends. Leaders don't want to do it. They don't want the ambassadors to take it and they're just stopping there. Yeah, well, it's an issue that people weigh in Brussels and the EU in general like to talk about a lot, but it's obviously very difficult, not to crack. Now, as I said, I'm not a Hulumi fan. I think it's utterly disgusting. I prefer a nice mild English cheddar. But for those of people who do like Hulumi, we've got some bad news. It's actually quite serious. There's been an outbreak of foot and mouth disease on Cyprus, and that's affecting the hers. They produce the milk that are used in Hulumi. Obviously Cyprus is divided between the bit in the EU and of the Turkish controlled bit, and that's really exacerbating the problem. Yeah, and now we're in a situation where farmers are being asked to slaughter entire herds to conform with EU rules, are quite harsh calling rules. And this has led to protest from Cypriot farmers because they say their colleagues in the north, the Turkish held north, are not obliged to do this. And also, it doesn't seem to make much sense in sanitary terms because you're applying different rules in different places. Cyprus is asking the EU to ease its rules, but so far, Brussels is saying no. Yeah, Turkish authorities basically think vaccination alone can manage the outbreak. Whereas EU guidelines say that basically you have to call animals that could have been exposed to foot and mouth. As one of the officials we quoted in the story says, "Almost half the island is handling the virus completely differently from us." And I love this quote actually from a man called Pannikos Chambas, the president of the Cyprus cooperative company. Cyprus is a single entity. It is a pastoral entity. The environment, the sun, and the air cannot be divided. They are all one. You just brought me right to Cyprus. I think we should recall that Hulumi is one of these geographically protected cheeses that can only come from Cyprus. So let's hope this doesn't lead to a worldwide Hulumi shortage. Well, for those of you that like Hulumi, let's hope that that doesn't happen and I'll go back to having my cheddar on. I do want to say this report is fair and balanced because I'm a big fan of Hulumi and we're bringing you both sides. I thought you were going to say you like, you know, smelly French blue cheese or something. I like that too, but Hulumi, Hulumi is pretty tasty. Okay, thanks everyone for listening to the podcast today. If you have a question for us about the Hungarian election or how we're covering it or a comment about how you think it might change the EU, please send us a whatsapp using the link in the show notes or if you want and this might be easier to tell us your favourite or your most disgusting European cheese. Is there anything worse than Hulumi? Nick, thanks for joining us today and thanks to you at home for listening and if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the show and we'll be back tomorrow. But you really don't like it even fried or whatever. No, don't go anywhere near it.