The EU Council has refused to comment on the European Commission’s decision to refuse to engage with the Council’s Hungarian presidency, even after a formal question from a member of the European Parliament. The silence comes despite the fact that the boycott encouraged ministers from several member states to refuse to attend the meetings organized by Budapest—and potentially even violated EU treaties.
In a written question dated July 23rd, MEP Christine Anderson (AfD/ESN) asked the Council what it thought about the Commission’s unprecedented boycott against the presidency of a member state. She also asked whether it anticipates obstacles to the presidency’s work because of this decision, and whether it was even legal under the EU’s institutional framework—and if not, what steps it will take to address it.
It is common for EU institutions to take months to answer MEPs’ questions, although the reply Anderson got last month—just weeks before the conclusion of the Hungarian presidency—could have been written in seconds.
“It is not for the Council to comment on positions expressed by the Commission,” the Council wrote simply. Case closed.
Now, this reply perfectly encapsulates the cognitive dissonance in the heart of the EU. Institutionally, it is the very task of the Council to have an opinion on Commission proposals. What’s more, the issue here relates to a decision that affected the EU Council’s own ability to carry out its duties. This should make it a priority question—if it wasn’t about a conservative presidency in the first place.
“It is quite astonishing that the Council is unable to comment on the Commission’s boycott of the Hungarian presidency, even though this boycott is in fact not a boycott of the Hungarian presidency, but a boycott of the functioning of the institutions itself,” Anderson told The European Conservative. “It appears the Commission under Ursula von der Leyen is the enemy within.”
As you may remember, the boycott began as an initiative of a few larger member states and the EU’s ex-foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, who wanted to punish Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán for his “peace mission” that included talks with Ukrainian president Zelensky, Russian president Putin, Chinese president Xi, and then U.S. presidential candidate, now President-elect Trump. The idea was that, instead of ministers, they would send lower-level officials to the Hungarian presidency’s meetings, in which over half the member states eventually took part.
Then, just two weeks after the beginning of the presidency, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen reportedly instructed her commissioners to join the boycott by not attending their respective meetings either. This move represented a whole new level of this petty political game. It was not member states deciding whether to help or hinder the presidency’s work, but another institution, the EU executive itself.
“The EU is an international organization constituted by its member states,” while the Commission is just “an institution of the EU,” Budapest’s permanent representative to the EU, János Bóka, wrote on X in response back then. “The EU Commission cannot cherry-pick institutions and member states it wants to cooperate with.”
Furthermore, the boycott of the Hungarian presidency also constituted a violation of the EU treaties, according to the first-ever report on the situation of the rule of law within the EU institutions.
The report, unveiled last month, stated that the Commission and the Council members—who first tried to prevent Hungary from assuming its duties and then partook in the boycott—were in breach of the “sincere cooperation” principle defined in EU law, which says that member states “shall, in full mutual respect, assist each other in carrying out tasks which flow from the Treaties.”
In retrospect, it is also ironic that the whole reason for the circus was Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ‘radical’ idea of negotiating a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine which, by and large, has become the mainstream position by now both in Kyiv and Brussels.
Nonetheless, with the Hungarian presidency nearing its end, we can say it was a successful one despite all the efforts to undermine it in the beginning. The greatest highlight was undoubtedly the so-called “Budapest Declaration on the New European Competitiveness Deal,” but we could also point to the expansion of Schengen into Romania and Bulgaria, which could not have happened without the Hungarian government relentlessly pursuing it during a series of informal meetings on the subject.
