Michal Ovádek
This article forms part a series on perspectives from across UCL and beyond on the changing geopolitical order, and the implications for Europe, the European Union and the EU-UK relationship. Find more articles here.
As the EU seeks to assemble a financial and regulatory package to revitalize Europe’s defense industry at scale, it comes as little surprise that Hungary is once again working to undermine a unified response by the Member States. For years, the Hungarian government has acted as a Trojan horse for foreign authoritarian regimes, particularly Russia.
Hungary has been obstructing EU statements and initiatives requiring unanimity ever since Viktor Orbán began his authoritarian turn in 2010. However, the frequency of these disruptions has increased dramatically since 2023, placing considerable strain on the EU’s institutional system. Since 2011, Hungary has been reported as blocking 18 EU statements or decisions—more than twice as many as the next Member State—with 9 of those vetoes taking place since October 2023.
The number of realized vetoes is merely the peak of the iceberg. Veto threats force the EU to accommodate Hungary’s (and frequently, by extension, Russia’s or China’s) demands or agree to compensation, such as the disbursement of funds which would have been otherwise withheld for rule of law violations.
The EU operates under two primary modes of decision-making. One requires unanimity, granting each Member State a veto over decisions, while the other—qualified majority voting (QMV)—allows an enhanced majority to adopt decisions without any single state holding veto power. The applicable rule depends on the policy area, but ambiguity in some cases gives the EU, particularly the European Commission, discretion in framing decisions under different policy categories—and, therefore, different procedural rules.
With a recalcitrant state in its ranks, the EU is being forced, more than ever before, to bypass unanimity, despite its traditional role in the institutional framework. Where possible, the EU is opting for QMV to circumvent Hungarian (or any other Member State’s) veto. However, this strategy requires pushing the previous boundaries of EU competences to expand the use of QMV while narrowing the scope of competences subject to unanimity. While such competence engineering is as old as the EU itself, the combination of larger membership and increased polarization between Member States is resulting in unprecedented marginalisation of unanimity procedures, as witnessed in the proposals to shore up the European defense industry through QMV.
At the same time, the constitutional constraints on European integration—originally envisioned by the Member States—are loosening. Policies once considered impossible to adopt through QMV, such as defense procurement, are now increasingly within the purview of the EU’s engine of integration, the internal market. Since 1987, the EU has had the competence to regulate its internal market using QMV. Given that many if not most regulatory issues can be framed in such terms, the provision on the internal market has been particularly useful for actions which would otherwise need to be governed by unanimity.
Another way for Member States to sidestep national vetoes is by cooperating outside the EU framework entirely. “Coalitions of the willing” can negotiate intergovernmental treaties that exclude obstructive states like Hungary. However, such agreements are subject to less scrutiny and accountability than those reached within the EU institutional structure. They also question psychologically, if not always practically, the EU’s ongoing relevance and viability as an integration project and forum for deep European cooperation. The EU’s own mechanism for differentiated integration, known as “enhanced cooperation” is rarely used.
Both the erosion of procedural constraints within the EU and agreements made outside its framework modify the path of European integration charted by its existing constitutional framework. More than any other Member State, Hungary continues to stretch the EU’s institutional system to its limits—and beyond recognition.
Michal Ovádek is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in European Institutions, Politics and Policy at UCL. Prior to joining, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Between 2019 and 2021, he worked as a political advisor in the European Parliament. He obtained his PhD at KU Leuven in Belgium.
Note: The views expressed in this post are those of the author, and not of the UCL European Institute, nor of UCL.
Featured Image: Hungarian parliament building by Nelson Wong on Unsplash
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