Brace for the Hungarian EU presidency

By Georgi Gotev | @GeorgiGotev

Analyse this: On 6 June, we will vote in the European elections. And on 1 July, Hungary will take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, giving a big role to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán just when the top EU jobs for the next five years will be decided.

Strange as it may seem, for the time being, Orbán seems to be trying to convey that the EU is not a priority for him and that his loyalties are elsewhere. 

He skipped an EU summit on Monday because he had better things to do: He attended the Belt and Road summit in China, where he had separate meetings with Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was the only one among EU leaders to publicly react, calling Orbán’s handshake with Putin, a man wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, “very, very unpleasant”.

“How can you shake a criminal’s hand who has waged a war of aggression, especially coming from a country that has a history like Hungary has?” she wondered.

As a journalist, I have also wondered why Orbán behaves as counter-current to the rest of the EU in such a steady and unwavering way.

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Both Germany and France claimed victory after an agreement was reached among EU countries on Tuesday to reform the EU’s electricity market. Euractiv looks at what Paris and Berlin got out of the deal.

The Latvian government committed on Wednesday to help Ukraine restore and develop its telecom infrastructures, support it in meeting the EU telecom acquis, and help it to participate in EU and international programmes.

ENISA, the EU cybersecurity agency, has warned that powerful new AI models might become a disruptive factor in the EU elections next June as malicious actors could use them to run large-scale information manipulation campaigns.

The European Commission is planning to table a European Wind Power Package on Tuesday, aiming to strengthen the EU’s wind industry by solving the challenges it is facing, according to leaked drafts seen by Euractiv.

The Irish government has confirmed it will set up a working group to ensure the sustainability of biofuels used in the country, as concerns grow that tainted fuels are entering the EU market.

Despite the transition to climate neutrality creating frictions in the short-term, politicians should not change course, investors in green technologies said, asking for clear signals that the transition will be followed through.

The European Parliament formally approved the agreements on digitalisation of visas in the Schengen area on Wednesday, the penultimate step to the file becoming a legislative act.

Ukraine is desperately short of judges, and is kick-starting a long-delayed nationwide hiring spree to fill more than 2,000 vacancies and vet around as many sitting judges for potential malfeasance.

EU countries recruiting foreign healthcare staff to address shortages, rather than investing in domestic workforce development, may weaken the EU’s international health cooperation efforts, an EU Commission official warned. 

• Informal meeting of trade ministers in Valencia Thursday-Friday.
• Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius visits Ukraine Thursday-Friday.
• Justice and Home Affairs Council in Luxembourg Thursday-Friday.
• Commission President Ursula von der Leyen participates in the EU-US Summit in Washington Friday.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]