← Brussels Playbook Podcast
Brussels Playbook Podcast
Inside the campaign to unseat Orbán
00:37:52
Hungarians may be voting on Sunday, but all EU citizens might feel the effects.
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Edu Events. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington. Edu Sci Hungarian voters go to the polls on Sunday, but citizens around the EU have something at stake in the outcome. Over his 16 years in power, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been drifting away from the European mainstream, breaking with allies, clashing with institutions, and increasingly vetoing decisions at the EU level. There's a sense here that if he goes, things might just move again. Look, it's a bit of a gamble. After all, his challenger, Peter Magyar, is a former Orban ally, so the hope is that he might simply be less inclined to pick fights with Brussels at every turn. And Magyar isn't even the first serious challenger to Orban. Last time around, the opposition united around a single figure, but Orban won anyway. So what would push Hungarian voters to turn away from Orban this time around? Why rally behind Magyar, a former Fidesz insider, a product of the same system he now wants to dismantle? And if Orban does lose, what does that change for Europe? Because, yes, Brussels might breathe a sigh of relief, but whether Orban stays or goes, the EU will still have a system that allows one country to hold things up, especially in foreign policy with a veto. So are we looking at a real shift in how the EU does foreign policy, or just a change in who gets to block it? I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential. Later in the episode, I'll speak to my colleague Nick Vinoker about whether a leadership change in Hungary would really make EU foreign policy work again, or whether the problem runs much deeper, down to the way the EU actually makes decisions. But first, my conversation with journalist Abigail Frison. You might recognize her name. She was part of the EU Confidential team. Not long ago, as a trainee, she left us to go work on a very cool project. For months, Abigail has been on the ground in Hungary filming a documentary about this election. Let's hear from her now. All right, Abigail, it's great to see you. Where are you right now? I can see these beautiful trees. Bring us there with you.
- [02:51]
B
Hi, Sarah, it's so nice to see you and hear from you again. I'm in Hungary right now and I have been in the last two weeks. I am going back and forth between the capital, Budapest to feel the temperature here, but also between rural areas where I'm meeting with local campaigners and talking to them about how this campaign is going.
- [03:11]
A
So yeah, what is the temperature of voters in the days before the election?
- [03:16]
B
Well, there's a lot of tension, I must say, from the side of TISA voters. So the people who are voting against Viktor Orban and Fides, there's a lot of hope, a lot of excitement. I think these two years of campaigning are finally coming to an end and you can see that they are really hopeful of being able to win. But at the same time there's also a sense of urgency and a sense of fear. I think a lot of them are fearful that Viktor Orban still has a couple of tricks up his sleeve and maybe will come up with a new strategy or a new communication in the last days up to the election that could change something in this campaign. And in the past weeks it's also what we've been seeing. There's been a lot of new subjects, new people coming forward. So it's been a very tentious couple of weeks, I must say, this past month up to the election and I think people are somewhat excited to be over with it and see the result on Sunday.
- [04:03]
A
And yet you've been in the country, as you said, going back and forth between the capital and rural areas, working on a documentary about the campaign. What have you learned in this project?
- [04:14]
B
So, yeah, so since November I've been going back and forth. I live in Brussels, but I've been coming to Hungary a couple of times with a camera to try and meet campaigners that are working for this movement, this movement, tisa in rural Hungary. I thought this was very interesting because one third of Hungarians live in rural areas and these rural areas are often quite secluded and they often vote massively for Viktor Orban and Fides. So we can see that there's an actual goal of this campaign to try and target these left behind territories and talk to voters that are often harder to convince by more liberal left leaning parties. So my goal in this documentary has been to go and talk to them and understand how TISA is organized in a more rural level. The way the party is organized is by these TISA islands they call them, which is smaller organizations all around the country which try to do the backbone of the work and of the campaigning work locally.
- [05:10]
A
It's really interesting because you say that typically more left leaning arguments have not been very effective here in These rural areas. And so on the one hand, these Tisa islands are using a new communication strategy, but is Peter Magyar really delivering a left wing message or are they just finding ways to reach these voters with maybe also a message that is more appealing to them?
- [05:31]
B
The political identity of Peter Magyar and TISA is a very interesting subject and at the same time something that people are quite reluctant to talk about because it feels like the communication around the party is way more the idea of a systematic change, of a regime change and of fundamentally reforming the country, rather than a political ideology and a political alignment from left to right. So I feel like there are certain issues that the voters care about that I've talked to a lot of domestic issues, but also a lot of questions of corruption, of democratic changes, of freedom. So these are mostly the themes that are coming up a lot with TISA voters rather than this left to right identity. And I have a specific example of that. Back in February, I spent the afternoon with these three campaigners in a smaller town in southern Hungary. And I've talked to each of them about their motivation and who they were and their political affiliations. And the first was a man who was very loyal to Fidesz for a long time and said that the last election he has started campaigning for the first time against Fidesz, for this far right movement, Jobik, that was part of this grand coalition that was trying to to take over from Orban. And then the second woman who said that she was apolitical and called herself a centrist and said that she had never cared about politics before, but this time she was participating in this movement. And a third woman who self identified as a leftist and said that she had always voted on the left, but this time it was beyond politics. So I thought it was such a good example of these three people walking side by side and trying to do this work, even though they probably disagreed on most issues.
- [07:11]
A
Really fascinating the group of people that TISA is bringing together. And you've talked a bit about what's driving some of the people who are abandoning Fidesz, but what about the people who are still sticking with Orban? Like what is motivating them to stay with their guy who's been around for 16 years and is overseeing a really struggling economy.
- [07:28]
B
I think to understand at least partially what's going on in Fidesz voters brains. It's very interesting to look at the way Orban communicates. If you look at his speech he's done a month ago at the national day rally on 15th March, he speaks mostly of foreign issues. He rarely talks about domestic issues or the economy, as in local policies. He mostly talks about foreign issues. He speaks of Ukraine and Brussels. And that's what I see also in the couple of voters that I've spoken to, that there's this idea that there's an attack on Hungary from the outside that Viktor Orban is going to be protecting you from. And this idea that there's a large foreign intervention in. In Hungarian politics coming from both the European Union and Ukraine, and that Viktor Orban is kind of the only solution against these interventions and interferences. So that is a subject that comes up quite a lot, this idea that Hungary is under threat. It can be a very clear war threat. So they talk a lot about the wish for peace and the wish to stay out of Ukraine's war, as they call it. And at the same time, this idea that Brussels is trying to meddle with Hungarian politics and keeping Hungary hostage, both politically and economically, and not allowing them to make up their own mind about how they want to run the country. So they really believe that Orban is this figure that also makes Hungary matter on the international stage with his relationship, for example, with the United States. So I think all of these themes are coming up a lot. When you talk to Fidesz voters, I
- [08:59]
A
actually want to jump off on one of those things. Just a few days ago, we had J.D. vance come to Budapest and campaign for Orban. You were in town. How did that go over with people?
- [09:11]
B
It's actually very surprising because it's something I talked about a couple of days ago with a Tisa voter who said that it was very interesting how Viktor Orban speaks a lot of foreign affairs, but in his speeches, at least, he doesn't really talk about the friends he has internationally. So he's really trying to pit this idea that Hungary is against the rest of the world and is being attacked from the east and from the west, and they can only count on him. But he doesn't really often speak about his relationships. And J.D. vance, I think, is a very good example of that of someone who came to Hungary and showed his support quite clearly to Viktor Orban. And a lot of people on both sides have this fear of foreign intervention. So just like on Orban's side, the Disaf voters have the same idea, but way more about the United States or about Russia. This fear of foreign intervention not allowing them to have a straightforward and democratic election, that's really interesting.
- [10:02]
A
So there's a bad actor on the outside for both groups of voters. But for the Orban voters, that bad actor is Brussels, basically. And for Magyar voters, those bad actors are Washington and Moscow.
- [10:17]
B
Exactly. So there's definitely this whole foreign side of the campaign. But at the same time, what I think is interesting is that Peter Modyar, in his speeches and his communication, is really trying to push back on this narrative of only talking of foreign issues. And he's trying to pull back domestic issues, because he knows, I think, that on those domestic issues, he can convince a lot of voters by promising a different way forward and different policies. So he's mainly focusing in his campaign, in the communication, on domestic issues, on tax policies, on freedom within the country, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. He's really talking of these issues a lot on healthcare, on education.
- [10:54]
A
Going back to what you said about these three activists who came from different political backgrounds. And that just reminded me that we have seen before this moment where ideologically diverse groups come together to try to unite around one candidate to defeat Viktor Orban. And no matter how united they seem, they don't manage. At this point, we are seeing orban still about 10 points behind in the polls. So Orban opponents do seem even more optimistic this time that he will be defeated. So what is different about Magyar and his campaign?
- [11:27]
B
So I can only speak of how I perceive it with the people that I talk to. In my opinion of what I'm told, there's a large difference, which is that last time, what we saw was these older, already existing parties doing a primary together a year before the election, and then running together, but still within their own political affiliations. And this, this coalition, as you call it, went from the Socialist Party MSP until all the way to Jobbik, which is a far right movement, which was tough because a lot of people didn't want to vote for the coalition by fear of voting for certain parties they disliked. In this coalition, you also have the party Dheka, the Democratic Coalition, which is a social democratic party that was at power before Orban. So people had a lot of opinions already about these parties. Whereas here we see a whole new movement where all the other parties kind of endorsed this new party rather than stood beside it, and kind of disappeared within this new movement. And I think people can trust some of them, at least trust better a new movement where the politicians that are represented locally are not from the political sphere, but people that have never before been elected. So there's this idea of a refreshment and a new movement, rather than just a coalition of what already existed. And there's also a Clearer leadership. I think last time we had Peter Markizajt representing this movement and he was less present, I think in the campaign as a face of the movement than Peter Magyar is.
- [12:53]
A
But I mean, it's interesting that you say that he's seen as new and seen as a fresh face because he was a Fidesz insider. You know, he had this big falling out, including with his ex wife. And now he's created this new party. But some people say, look, this guy actually is really just Orban Light.
- [13:09]
B
So I've seen this criticism definitely from certain people I've talked to on the ground. In my experience, I've seen it more in Budapest rather than in rural areas. I've heard less criticism of him as a person and of the movement in rural areas that I've seen in Budapest. In Budapest, the voters have definitely this mistrust in the character, but a bigger trust in the movement itself and in the necessity to change the Orban government. So I do see this criticism from certain people towards Petar Madhyar. I have been to one of his rallies where at the end of his speech people were asking questions and that was the question coming up, which was how can we trust you when you were part of Fidesz before? And how can we trust you? You are a rich man from the city coming to tell us that you're going to make it better for us. So these are definitely recurrent themes in his speech. He doesn't necessarily go way from this idea. He doesn't deny that he was supporting Fidesz. I think something that resonates with a lot of people is the disappointment in Fides because a lot of voters used to vote for Fidesz and the name Fides is Young Democrats. So there is this idea of Orban Victor in the 90s and a lot of people believed in him. And certain people that went over to TISA lately were disappointed in Fidesz. So maybe this idea of Marjorpeter also being disappointed and going over to a new movement resonates with them.
- [14:28]
A
And he probably doesn't want a lot of help from Brussels given Orban's criticism. But it's safe to say that in sort of official Brussels there is really hope that he will win. He is basically the solution to Brussels, Hungary problem. There's hope that he will stop blocking action to help Ukraine, that he will improve the corruption situation. Has he given any hints that should indeed make Brussels be confident that he'll be more cooperative for this?
- [14:56]
B
I'll speak again of the 15th of March rallies because I think Those are very interesting. They were exactly 28 days before the election. And on the national days you had these two giant rallies in Budapest happening at the same time. And I think it's very interesting to compare the speeches of the two candidates. And Peter Magyar tried not to speak too much of foreign issues. He didn't speak of the European Union as such, but he did start the speech by saying that Hungary was part of the west and that was its destiny and part of the European Community and part of NATO. So he is showing that European sentiment for sure. And he does have a plan, as he says, to bring back EU funds. So in that sense, yes, he does speak about Brussels and about the European Union, but he is definitely trying not to concentrate too much of his political campaign on that subject, because, as I said earlier, there is this sphere in Hungarian voters of foreign intervention in their elections. And because of the Hungarian past, I think of having often had large powers having an effect in Hungary, let that be the Ottoman Empire, the Austrian Empire or the Soviet Union. There is this fear of having a higher power influencing Hungarian politics.
- [16:04]
A
You know, what are the big issues that voters are talking about on the ground that we're not discussing in Brussels?
- [16:11]
B
A large issue right now, very recently, is a question around two whistleblowers who have come forward since the end of March, speaking against Orban. First you had Ben Cebo, who was a former Hungarian police captain and detective who was serving in the cybercrime unit. He came forward speaking of the fact that he was involved in an unusual police and intelligence operation where they had raided the homes of two IT specialists that were linked to Tisa. And he said that there was a lot of pressure from intelligence services to do that operation and that the reasoning for the investigation felt very different publicly than what was actually discussed internally. And not much later you had a second whistleblower coming forward that made even bigger waves, who's called Sylvester Palinkas, and he's actually an army captain and he was the public face of the military recruitment campaign of Fidesz and Viktor Orban. And he was actually a friend of Viktor Orban's son. And he came forward in a two hour interview last week for the media telex where he very bluntly and clearly criticized the Hungarian Defence Forces and the army. He has personally criticized the Minister of Defence, saying he was the worst in the Ministry's history, that they had reached a moral low point. He has spoken of the low quality of life of soldiers, of their low wages. And he directly also attacked Hungary's take on Ukraine. He has said that internally it is seen as a joke that this idea that Ukraine could be a military threat to Hungary. So he really turned to ridicule, even these policies, these foreign policies of Orban. And he said that in his opinion, you could imagine 90% of the army voting against Fidesz and saying that that is what he sees on the inside. So it was actually very interesting to see because it's not something that usually happens in Hungary to have high level whistleblowers coming forward against the government.
- [17:56]
A
What's the kind of best knockout punch that Orban has delivered at Magyar?
- [18:03]
B
I think definitely this idea that Peter Magyar is not acting on his own and he's actually the muppet of foreign powers. Actually in one of his speeches he even said Brussels is dressing in a Hungarian men's clothes. And this idea that Petit Amajar is not really who is up against Viktor Orban. And he has said it's either me or the country will be run by Zelenskyy. So there's really this idea that if Petar Magyar gets elected, it's not him that's going to run the country, it's going to be Brussels and Ukraine. And that is really resonating with the people.
- [18:36]
A
So just stepping back. Viktor Orban has come back from behind in the past and each time he does, it does seem like there's a new movement that kind of rises up to try to take him on. So with this election coming up this weekend, you know what's at stake? Will this be the end of Fidesz if Orban loses this election? And if he wins, is it safe to say, like he's pretty much permanently ensconced from here on out.
- [19:00]
B
So definitely there's this sense of urgency. One of the mottos of TISA is is it means now or never? But they cross off the or never with a red line saying it's now and it will happen. And this movement has grown and grown in the past two years and it feels like it's coming to this end moment where the election is happening. I feel like with a lot of the volunteers I've talked to, they refuse to even talk about a possibility of Fidesz winning again. Of course, that is something that I've heard a lot four years ago already when people said, what now? If all of us could unite and still not beat him, what can we do next? So Hungarians in that sense are quite creative with finding new solutions, new movements. So I don't know, of course, and I can't look in the future. And guess what would happen? What we see is an erosion of certain democratic things in Hungary and new laws being put in place. I think another thing that we're looking at is whether there will be a 2/3 majority in the parliament because simple majority is enough to vote laws, but it's not enough to amend the constitution. So that is also a very big question, whether either side will get this 2/3 majority, in which case, of course, there is more power to either sides to actually fundamentally change the constitution and the rules of the country.
- [20:13]
A
Okay. Abigail Frison, thank you so much. Doing us proud. Can't wait to see your documentary.
- [20:18]
B
Thank you so much, Sarah. See you soon.
- [20:22]
A
Alright, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll zoom out. If Hungary changes course, Brussels may feel an immediate sense of relief. But has this just been a victor problem or more about the veto, the trump card any country can play that keeps EU foreign policy slow, fragmented and often stuck. My colleague Nick Winiker has been reporting on how Europe's foreign policy machinery is creaking under pressure from Ukraine, funding to the war in Iran and the growing calls to rethink unanimous decision making altogether. Stay with us.
- [21:02]
C
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- [21:32]
A
All right. Now to that conversation. So, Nick, you have a piece out this week on EU foreign policy and why it's becoming harder and harder for the EU to act even as the world gets more chaotic. And the argument that we keep hearing is that this is all a problem with unanimity, the fact that we need everybody on board, a single country can veto and hold everything up. We've just been talking about Hungary and the hope in Brussels is that if Victor Orban, the most famous veto player, goes away, then things will get easier. But. But is the problem really just hungry or are they just kind of the, the clearest example of why this rule isn't working anymore.
- [22:11]
C
I think Hungary has kind of made this unavoidable just because it's holding up so much. It's holding up literally all of EU foreign policy. If you consider foreign policy to be sanctions, that's an instrument we can use. If you consider it financing for other countries, if you consider it enlargement and bringing in new members. These are all kind of geopolitical instruments that the EU has. And on all three of those headings, Hungary is now blocking progress or blocking the EU policy. So I think it's become almost sort of too big to ignore, and it's brought it out. But of course, Hungary is not the only veto player. And we have a number of other examples where either countries are hiding behind Hungary because they find their veto kind of convenient to avoid certain discussions or cases where other countries are prepared to use the veto to protect their national interest. You know, talk about enlargement. You can talk about Bulgaria and North Macedonia, letting them in. You can talk about Cyprus. There are a number of countries who see it sort of, you know, their. Their vital interest to, to have the veto. But there are different ways of reforming this, and I'm sure we can get into that.
- [23:26]
A
Well, actually, indeed, you know, proceed with your own segue there. What are some of the ideas on the table?
- [23:32]
C
Yeah, I mean, there's been different ideas thrown around. I think the fact that everything is so paralyzed and blocked up has kind of brought forth some. Some reform ideas. Some people say, no, the issue is with the European External Action Service. We should just stuff that back into the commission and have an EU foreign minister.
- [23:50]
A
We will get into that one later. But yeah, for, for vetoes.
- [23:54]
C
I'll just stay on the vetoes. Yeah, it's kind of this shibboleth, basically, the. That, you know, through treaty reforms. We've had several treaties in the past 20, 30 years. This has really remained a kind of North Star, that you must have a veto on foreign and security policy, cfsp, as they call it here, and people are really clinging to it. The thing is, you could change it without really going after people's national interest. You could define it more narrowly. You could say, well, you have a joker card if you feel that your country, your country's core national interests are being endangered. Or it could be defined differently. Right. As it is in all these other areas. You could define when and how you can deploy your veto in different ways. There's also ways within the treaty, this passerelle clause that people talk about, which is never used. All right, explain that the passerelle clause is a means within the treaty. And I'm not an expert, but that does allow you to sort of get around the veto when the union's interests are being endangered. And this was all sort of conceived in the treaties, but is kind of not really used. And all of this really butts up against a reluctance in the capitals to just kind of engage with this, really. And we're really seeing a little bit of a crisis of the European Union, effectively, where it's like, well, what is it for?
- [25:18]
A
We are hearing, though, some key leaders kind of say, okay, let's actually move forward here.
- [25:24]
C
Yeah, it is really interesting because we were just drafting this piece and over the weekend the German foreign minister came out. He made a really forceful statement in favor of qualified majority voting in foreign policy. And you say Germany is obviously a big player. There is a coalition which has a kind of changing membership around qmv. There was something called the Friends of QMV that started in. In 2023, where we meet these friends.
- [25:53]
A
Explain QMV.
- [25:54]
C
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So QMV qualified majority voting. This is already the standard in other areas of EU policy. On energy, for instance, decisions are taken by qualified majority. That's how you get countries like Hungary and Slovakia having to accept Russian energy being phased out. What that is, is that something is passes by QMV if at least 55% of member states, it's 15 out of 27 representing at least 65%. So more than 2/3 of the EU POP population agree to a certain measure. It is a pretty high bar. It is a pretty high bar. It kind of resembles the bar that you have in some national parliaments to do a constitutional change. Two thirds of the assembled of lawmakers is kind of a standard there.
- [26:41]
A
And you could, you could make it even higher for foreign policy, arguably.
- [26:45]
C
Exactly. You can do things like that. You could make it even higher. You could really sort of ring fence how that veto works? How do we define national interest? Or does it really become security? Do you have to come up with a really good argument to say, my vital interests are at stake here? And like you said, we had the German foreign minister come out, we had the Swedish Prime Minister, and he said it on the sidelines of Yuko, where you and I were just a few weeks ago after coming out of this meeting about the Ukraine loan. Just seeing the absolute frustration in the room with. With Viktor Orban and saying, we're going to have to discuss this again.
- [27:24]
A
Yeah, I mean, I find the Swedish openness to this much more interesting than the German openness to this. Because it's sort of easy for Germany to say these little. These little countries are holding everything thing up. Because the bottom line is nothing happens in the EU if there's a strong. It wouldn't even get to the point of the Yuko if Germany objects to it. Whereas, yeah, some of these other smaller countries are really giving up an important piece of leverage if they were to give up their, their veto.
- [27:49]
C
They are. But you know, another way of looking at it. And of course the small countries art of Weber, the Belgian Prime Minister, he kind of made himself the, the spokesperson for these small countries. They're protecting different things. But you could see it, you know, why can we not have EU decisions that are taken by a smaller number of countries? What is stopping us from saying you can simply opt out, you can simply opt out from this foreign policy decision and say you don't agree with it. And people say, oh well, sanctions are not going to work like that. There's a unwillingness to open this up and have a real debate about it. There's just very little sort of appetite in the capitals to really engage with this issue. But there are many different ways it could be done and more and more people coming out and saying this is really a problem.
- [28:37]
A
So, yeah, there's also this argument that this isn't just about the veto and these kind of big high level decisions. It's also about how EU diplomacy is organized. You know, we've talked a lot about how Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is stepping into this space, about her tensions with foreign policy chief Kaya Kallas. At the same time, Kalis, who is officially the EU's top diplomat this week, has been in the Gulf states. She visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, doing exactly the kind of diplomacy that the EU arguably still needs, pushing for de escalation, reassurance, keeping channels open, just showing a presence. So the EU has this sprawling diplomatic core known as the External Action Service. And before we get into debates about overhauling it, Nick, can you just give us the grounding on what it is and how it differs from say, a country's foreign service?
- [29:27]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting history, right? So this was founded in 2011 and it responds to a couple of things, which is the cacophony of different positions in the EU thinking, what is the EU saying on issue X or Y? And it also responds to a historical event which is the Balkan crisis and the Balkan wars. And the idea was that, well, we need to have a real representative for the rest of the EU can go and kind of represent us in these states. And in a way it was in those early years when it functioned best, when it was focused on that kind of small regional problem with Katherine Ashton being the high rep at the time. And it has grown it's grown a bureaucracy, it's grown delegations around the world. It's. It functions in a weird way where it's a mix between EU officials kind of functionnaire, and then also national diplomats who are seconded to the eas. So there is a lot there. There's a lot of staff. What there isn't is a mechanism for giving these people instructions for what they're supposed to do in the field and for feeding back to Brussels and aligning resources. That means we identify a foreign policy goal and give an area, well, we're going to invest some money and kind of target it. That is not really how it works because they are not the European Commission and the means of the Commission and the foreign policy goals are not aligned. And that's what some people say needs to be changed.
- [30:56]
A
So, yeah, basically the eas, it sort of. It kind of sits in this liminal space between the Commission and the Council. Like, that's why Kayakalis formal title is like. She's both an executive vice president within the European Commission, but she's also. She has this high representative title that is a European Council title. So that just kind of speaks to some of the confusion. There's a proposal that's kind of been bouncing around Schumann Circle lately for overhauling the eas.
- [31:25]
C
Yeah, it's exactly that. I mean, she is straddling both. And the idea was to say, well, she's a commissioner, she reports to the Commission, but she also is in charge of gathering the viewpoints of all the foreign ministers and producing a consensus view. But there was never the idea that she was going to craft policy with an impact on the world. We're going to take a decision and go do this. That's more than what the Commission does. And so the idea that's been out there for a while, it's not brand new. This is something the EPP has been pushing at least since 2024. It's in their manifesto.
- [32:01]
A
Center right, European People's Party.
- [32:02]
C
Exactly. Ursula von der Leyen's party was to say, you know what? We've created this big bureaucracy. Let's leave that to the side and fold it back into the European Commission. Let's name an EU foreign minister who's going to be one of the commissioners, who's going to report to the president of the European Commission and what be better able to align our means, all the money that the Commission has, and our foreign policy aims. The problem with that is that it doesn't solve the problem. On whose behalf is this person speaking? And if they formulate a position, who is it for? And this is the criticism of Ursula von der Leyen, saying, you're out there saying, we support regime change in Iran. You're out there making these declarations, even
- [32:53]
A
things like, you know, putting the Israeli flag on the commission after the October 7th attacks.
- [32:58]
C
Right. Agree or disagree, but the ministers, the capitalists are saying, you don't have. You did not come to us and ask us if we're okay with this being an EU position. And therefore, what is it? Is it the EU's position? It's your personal position. It's extremely confusing to the outside world, especially when von der Leyen has taken on such a high profile as kind of voice of the eu. And we saw this violent reaction, frankly, from the member states, especially from France, which is attached to the eas, after von der Leyen engaged with all kinds of Gulf leaders and put out a flurry of statements at the start of the Iran war. And they said, basically told her, French foreign minister in the room said, you need to stay in your lane. You are the commission president. You are not our foreign minister. And they have sort of batted her back. And that's leading to all these talks about how we can reform things. And the French are on yet another sort of lane, which is reforming the ES and making it more efficient, making it resemble more of a national foreign service where instructions go up and down and there are clear positions that they have to sort of carry out in the field. They're defending it now.
- [34:13]
A
Yeah, Nick. I mean, I guess one consistent thing I'm hearing is, you know, Germany in particular, you know, EPP very dominated by the German cdu. Ursula von der Leyen, you know, German cdu, epp, biggest economy in the eu. I'm just getting this vibe that, like, the European Union is not a country. And this has kind of always been the challenge whenever people complain about it not moving quickly. And is there a way to sort of have more decisive action, have more clear leadership, but not create this situation where people feel like, you know, oh, I'm from a smaller European country and, you know, we're just being led around by Germany, essentially?
- [34:55]
C
Yeah, I mean, there is. There is the opt out. There is the opt out. And a lot of EU countries opt out for whole planks of EU policy. They opt out of migration, they opt out of the euro. You could opt out of this statement, say, you know, I'm Malta. I don't agree with the statement on Lebanon, but you do put your finger on a real issue, which is the sense of kind of growing German dominance in town. They already hold a lot of the key positions in town. And the EU kind of rests on a Franco German balance effectively. And the feeling is that that balance is now being upset in Germany's favor. And one big factor is the Zeitenwende. Germany's defense ramp up has really sort of set alarm bells ringing in Paris, where all of a sudden you had this big soft power giant manufacturing giant across the border. Now they're a defense giant. That used to be just France's thing. And now they see Germany really kind of advancing on defense. And the concern about, well, if we also make big changes in foreign policy is that Germany's going to become a giant in foreign policy as well. Because if you move to qualified majority voting, like you said, that gives Germany a lot more power to influence the outcome around the council table. And then you would have defense and foreign policy both kind of more weighted towards Germany. And I think this is really causing France to slam hard on the brakes and say we're not going to do any of it.
- [36:27]
A
All right, we'll leave it there. Nick, thank you so much.
- [36:29]
C
You're welcome.
- [36:32]
A
That's all from us this week. Make sure you subscribe to the Brussels Playbook podcast, the feed you're listening to us on right now to get more in depth coverage each Friday. On that note, regular listeners to EU Confidential might notice a new look and branding in your feed in the coming weeks. But don't worry, this podcast isn't going anywhere. No action required other than to hit play. As always, you can reach us on our WhatsApp. The number's in the show notes. Or drop us an email at podcastolitico EU thanks to Deanna Sturris, who I hope will not edit me out, congratulating him on becoming our supervising audio producer. And to audio producer Sagar Ringmar, I'm Sarah Wheaton. See you next week.