this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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I still think it would be cleaner if they used the official mechanism for this, ie. stripping then of voting rights, rather than resorting to extra-legal tactics like these which is essentially just blackmail.
They should use everything. The time for appeasing this wannabe dictator is long over.
I wonder if he's being treated with kid gloves because he gives an excuse for not aiding Ukraine. "We wanted to, but it's that damn Orbán"
Not unthinkable, but I doubt it. It was the same before Ukraine. The issues is that consensus is the basis of the EU. To degree that makes sense - otherwise states wouldn't be willing to surrender their power to a central govenrment - but it's been overdone quite a bit. We can't afford to ignore minorities that account for 30 to 49% of the population, but we also can't afford not to ignore the 10% that isn't willing to cooperate.
I figure you're right, it really doesn't seem all that likely but it was just a thought that popped into my head.
But yeah, it's interesting to see what this current "turbulence" will lead to. Requiring consensus only has a chance to work if everyone is acting in good faith, so when a member state is well on its way to becoming essentially a dictatorship with aims that are directly at odds with the EU's goals, there's simply no way consensus will work.
It's interesting that the EU really doesn't have too many good mechanisms to do anything about bad-faith actors in the first place. Eg. using Hungary's funding as a lever has been tried, but because of the consensus requirement, Orbán can essentially hold decisions hostage until he gets what he wants.
Too many systems have been built with the implicit assumption that all participating actors are acting in good faith, and a single bad-faith actor can actually cause remarkable amounts of trouble because there's no mechanisms for stopping them
They can't. Hungary was protected by Poland and now will be by Slovakia. The EU Commission can theoretically act independently but in practice, this is political. And the EU Council can only take official action if Hungary has no friends at all.
Yeah, that's the price they pay for not acting while the disease hadn't spread yet
On the other hand, EU Council would not take action if Hungary has even only one enemy.
Politics?