The Coronavirus Exposes the EU’s Limited Power

The other, perhaps greater, reason for the EU’s inaction is that it doesn’t have much of a choice. Contrary to the belief of some European politicians, the bloc cannot unilaterally expel a member state. It can suspend certain rights of a country under Article 7 of the Treaty of Lisbon if there is “a clear risk” that a member state is breaching the EU’s fundamental values, including freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law. In this case, however, the procedure is largely toothless: Article 7 is effective only if all the other EU members agree to enact it, and that requirement of unanimity makes it easy to undermine. “Hungary and Poland will back each other up,” Garvan Walshe, the executive director of TRD Policy, told me. Both countries have had Article 7 proceedings triggered against them in the past, to little effect.

The other options at the EU’s disposal are similarly fraught. Though the bloc could limit the amount of funding allocated to Hungary in its next long-term budget, which is currently being negotiated, that’s not so simple. For one, “the European Commission doesn’t have the relevant powers” to withhold funding unilaterally, Walshe said. It would require the support of EU heads of state and the European Parliament, which brings with it further challenges. “If you introduce a mechanism that can limit funding to Hungary or divert funding away from Hungary, other countries will be looking at that and asking, ‘Well, can that happen to me at some point in the future?” Rahman said. “And that’s where the reluctance comes in.”

A final alternative for the EU would be to begin infringement proceedings against Hungary—in other words, to take Hungary to court. The European Commission can refer the matter to the European Court of Justice, the bloc’s highest legal body, which could in turn impose financial penalties. (Previous fines have totaled up to 100,000 euros, or about $110,000, a day.) The problem with this approach is that it takes time, by which point action may be too little, too late. “Time is on the side of the autocratic governments,” Petra Bárd, a law professor and researcher at the Central European University, which has in the past been targeted by Orbán, told me. “Once constitutional capture happens, it’s very, very difficult to undo it.”

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Europe has been at the center of this health crisis, with countries such as France, Italy, and Spain struggling to cope. Yet it is undoubtedly also an existential crisis for the EU. It’s challenging, after all, to preach the values of democracy and rule of law when one of your own is openly flouting them. There is nothing to stop politicians in other EU member states, such as Italy’s Matteo Salvini—now in the opposition, but once his country’s deputy prime minister and now seeking the premiership—from thinking that they may one day be capable of doing the same. Perhaps a better question than what the EU should be doing to prevent Hungary undermining democracy, is whether the bloc is even capable of doing so.

“The EU seems to be a paper tiger,” Bárd said. “What we’ve seen in the past 10 years in Hungary is that there has been a continuous decline … I think the EU has already given up on Hungary a long time ago.”

Yasmeen Serhan is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic.