It took 19 months of broken promises and bellicose rhetoric for Hungary to finally ratify Sweden’s NATO membership.
Why, many observers wondered, when Hungary was about to approve the Nordic country’s entry into the military alliance?
That question has even confused members of Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz, according to Peter Ungar, an opposition lawmaker. He said he was approached by a Fidesz MP, ahead of Monday’s vote in Parliament to accept NATO expansion, and asked: “What the hell is going on with Sweden?”
That a member of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling party would seek an explanation from a rival politician is a measure of how confused even the Hungarian leader’s allies, who don’t care about his opponents, have become because their country has delayed his expansion. NATO.
“The whole thing is incomprehensible,” said Mr. Ungar, a Hungarian progressive whose mother, Maria Smit, is a prominent conservative and longtime ally of Mr. Orban. “No one understands what the problem was,” Mr. Ungar added.
He declined to name the member of parliament who had sought him out, saying Fidesz demands unquestioning loyalty and acceptance of Mr Orban’s decisions, no matter how confusing they may seem. (The government did not respond to a request for comment.)
When Parliament finally voted on Monday, it gave overwhelming support for Sweden’s membership. Zoltan Kovacs, Minister of State for International Communications, called it a “historic moment” noting that “Hungary has a legitimate interest in the security of Europe” and that Sweden will be “a strong and reliable ally”.
Hungary’s credibility, however, is more questionable.
The government submitted Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO applications to Parliament in July 2022, but was slow to put them to a vote. Finland was accepted by Hungary in March last year, but Parliament took another 11 months to reach Sweden.
Mr. Orban and government officials have offered a number of varying and sometimes far-fetched explanations for the delay, including complaints about references to Hungary in textbooks used in Swedish schools.
Some critics of the government, such as Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital, a research group critical of Fidesz, blamed Mr. Orban’s ego and his desire, as the leader of a small country with little economic or military leverage, to be in focus. of attention.
More conspiracy-minded critics suspected a collusion between Mr. Orban and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, pointing to the fact that, of the European Union’s 27 national leaders, only Hungary has met and been photographed shaking hands with Mr. Putin since the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
But there is no indication that Mr Orban’s friendship with Russia is more than an expression of his oft-stated desire to remain on good terms with Moscow, an important source of energy, and to avoid becoming embroiled in the war next door in Ukraine. .
This stance, which contrasts with those of fellow European leaders who see support for Ukraine as a moral and security imperative, helped Fidesz achieve a landslide victory, its fourth in a row, in Hungary’s last general election in April 2022.
The ego theory has perhaps more basis. Hungary’s standoff has certainly put a spotlight, if mostly unflattering, on Mr. Orban and his country, which has only 10 million people and accounts for just 1 percent of the European Union’s economic output.
Alarmed by the long delay, a bipartisan delegation of United States senators traveled to Budapest, the Hungarian capital, earlier this month to show that Hungary is being taken seriously. Government ministers and Fidesz lawmakers all refused to meet the senators, an injustice the government and its media machine celebrated as proof that Hungary makes its own decisions and will not be pressured.
“It’s not worth it for visiting American senators to try to apply pressure,” said Hungary’s hawkish foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto.
A warmer welcome came from Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, who traveled to Budapest on Friday to dissuade Mr Orban from his defiant one-vs-all stance on Sweden’s membership. To do so, he brought with him promises of increased military and industrial cooperation between the countries.
Shortly after his arrival in Budapest, Saab, a Swedish aerospace company, announced that it had signed a contract with the Swedish state to deliver four new Gripen fighter jets to Hungary.
Mr Kristersson, who had earlier said he would visit Budapest only after Hungary had ratified his country’s NATO membership, also brought with him a promise that Saab would open a research center in Hungary.
Perhaps more importantly, however, the Swedish prime minister’s visit gave Mr Orban the satisfaction of settling an old personal score. While serving as a member of the European Parliament in 2019, Mr Kristersson helped deliver a humiliating blow to Mr Orban by backing calls to expel Fidesz from a powerful bloc of centrist and conservative lawmakers.
To avoid the humiliation of the startup, Fidesz withdrew.
Agoston Mraz, director of the Nezopont Institute, a think tank that polls the government, said the most important aspect of Mr Kristersson’s visit was not just the expanded military cooperation but that the Swedish prime minister got to smile for the cameras with Mr. Orban.
“He’s not a big fan of Mr. Orban, but to be accepted into NATO he has to smile,” Mr. Mraz said.
Without it, he added, Mr Orban would struggle to explain to his core voters in the countryside why, after so many months of delay, Hungary dropped its objections to Sweden and let it join NATO. “It had to be explained and the explanation is that there is an agreement with the Swedish prime minister,” he said.
The military cooperation deal, in the works for many months, had nothing to do with Sweden joining the Western alliance and, according to diplomats and analysts, was linked to the Nato issue only so that Mr Orban could indicate a specific benefit. from his obstructionist policy.
This policy, at least initially, fit a familiar pattern, particularly evident in Hungary’s repeated battles with the European Union, defying mainstream opinion and asserting Hungarian sovereignty. Hungary also blocked an economic aid package for Ukraine for months, but caved under heavy pressure for it on February 1, just weeks after the European Union released $10 billion in frozen funding for Hungary.
The government, meanwhile, plastered the country with billboards featuring Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the EU’s Brussels executive, urging citizens to resist outside pressure: “Let’s not dance to the tunes.”
As time ticked on, however, and Turkey, the only other power blocking Sweden’s membership, ratified the Nordic nation’s membership in January, Hungary’s continued delays, despite Mr Orban’s pledge on January 24 to accept the Sweden “at the first possible opportunity”, caused increasing embarrassment, even to some government allies.
When opposition lawmakers called an emergency session of Parliament on February 5 to finally vote on Sweden’s admission, Fidesz boycotted the session.
Mr Mraz, a Fidesz supporter with ties to its leadership, said the boycott simply reflected Hungary’s domestic political reality. “We live in a polarized democracy and that means the opposition does not decide the date of Sweden’s acceptance,” he said.
But Hungary, he acknowledged, had been surprised by the speed with which Turkey, a close economic and political partner, had quickly ratified Sweden’s accession after more than a year’s delay. “It was not comfortable for Mr. Orban that his promise that Hungary would not be the last could not be kept,” Mr. Mraz said.
But in the end, Mr. Orban got what he wanted, including a large portion of humble pie that Mr. Kristersson ate and a plausible story to tell his supporters.
“The Hungarian way of politics,” Mr. Mraz said, “is to shout and fight.” Others, particularly Scandinavians and EU officials in Brussels committed to pursuing consensus, may not like the Hungarian approach. But, Mr. Mraz said, “it works.”
