Spare a thought for the Hungarian in Brussels.
For the past six years, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán made waves everywhere with his firebrand nationalism and hardline opposition to migration, his men and women in the EU capital, and even their offspring, have felt the blowback to the rise of Orbánism — from top jobs missed to petty slights felt.
“The brand Hungary is a bit damaged in Brussels, certainly, now more than ever before,” said one Hungarian official.
Poland may have attracted the EU’s attention recently for controversial moves by its new right-wing government to limit press freedoms and judicial independence. Hungary is a smaller country that makes an easier target for criticism and political retribution.
Consider the case of Tibor Navracsics. A member of Orbán’s inner circle who had been a foreign minister and deputy prime minister, he was thrust onto the European political stage in 2014 when Jean-Claude Juncker asked EU leaders to nominate their best and brightest candidates for Commission posts.
Despite his strong credentials, Brussels was not impressed. In October 2014, Navracsics endured a difficult European Parliament “audition” hearing — in which he was grilled by MEPs on his role in Orbán’s government when it passed several controversial constitutional reforms that critics said undermined democracy and the rule of law. His nomination was held up by a parliamentary committee before finally being confirmed, but with a job description that was stripped of its responsibility for “citizenship.”
His reputation — at least in official EU circles, where he was seen as nothing more than Orbán’s man — suffered. Instead of giving Navracsics the EU enlargement portfolio that he wanted, Juncker relegated him to one of the Commission’s least important policy areas: culture, education, youth and sport.
“[Navracsics] was a very high-level, influential official. To give this portfolio to him was a message to Hungary,” said Olivér Várhelyi, Hungary’s EU ambassador, suggesting it may also have been retribution for Orbán’s opposition to Juncker as Commission president.
Navracsics says he is making the best of the role. “My portfolio is a community-building exercise,” Navracsics said in an interview. “I have no legislative powers actually, because it belongs to the member states. What can I do?”
To many Hungarians in town, his predicament speaks to their second-class status among the EU political and bureaucratic elite. As the Hungarian official said, “The only way to survive in the Commission is to deny being Hungarian.”
Hungary’s rocky road
Hungary’s relationship with Brussels has been turbulent since Orbán was elected in 2010 for his second stint as prime minister. His many EU critics have compared the Hungarian leader to a “dictator,” to use Juncker’s nickname for him, for putting political pressure on NGOs, restricting media and politicizing judicial posts.
Orbán’s outspoken opposition to many of the EU’s key initiatives on migration — and especially his decision to build barbed-wire fences along the Hungarian borders with Serbia and Croatia — also doesn’t sit well with other European leaders. Nor does his fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
While Hungary remains among the top recipients of EU funding for programs aimed at boosting its economic development and infrastructure, the officials it sends to Brussels say the cold shoulder in town harms its interests, and point to the low number of Hungarians in top Eurocrat ranks.
Even though with 10 million citizens it is the 14th-most-populous EU country, Hungary has just one official in a Commission cabinet post outside of Navracsics’ office, based in fisheries. “Can you imagine what kind of priority that is for Hungary, not having a sea?” Várhelyi said. “We need to improve our positions, we are not happy with that.”
It’s under-represented at the highest levels of the Commission’s policy departments, with no directors-general and just two deputy directors-general. By comparison, Portugal (also with a population of 10 million) has two directors-general and Belgium (ditto) has two directors-general and two deputy directors-general.
Some of that discrepancy is due to Hungary’s relative newcomer status, but the controversy surrounding Orbán makes it hard for Hungarians to fill jobs that come up. One of the two current Hungarian deputy DGs is retiring, and former Hungarian Commissioner László Andor said it’s unlikely the spot will go to another Hungarian. “It’s going to be difficult for Hungary to lobby for any person because of the isolation of the country,” said Andor, a member of the Socialist opposition party who served as EU employment and social affairs commissioner from 2010 to 2014, having been appointed by the previous government.
“[Orbán] made it very hard to make promotions, that’s the key issue.”
While there’s no way to calculate diplomatic damage, Andor points to what he said was a reluctance on the part of other EU leaders to meet with Orbán in the summer of 2011, when Hungary held the EU’s Council presidency. He added the government has been bad for business, with “very little” new foreign direct investment in Hungary “due to lack of rule of law and transparency.”
Pariahdom also hurts quality of life for Hungarians in the EU capital. Andor said his friends tell him their children have had a difficult time socializing in the European Schools in Brussels because they’re Hungarian.
A Hungarian Commission official described one incident in which a secondary school student was harassed because of the country’s refugee policies. “You’re evil, you’re Hungarian,” the student was told, according to the official.
“For young people in Brussels who hang out after work, if you say you’re Hungarian, people might keep their distance,” Andor said.
Even as a commissioner, Navracsics has had to endure some hazing as a result of his nationality.
“It’s still not easy to be a Hungarian commissioner,” said József Szájer, a Hungarian MEP from the center-right European People’s Party, which includes Orbán’s and Navracsics’ Fidesz party. “Anything that the government does, it’s put on him. The Commission is not a neutral institution.”
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One colleague described Navracsics — the son of teachers — as “excessively conscious of the fact that he’s Hungarian” and the baggage that comes with it in Brussels. It has forced him to tread carefully, and may have squelched any future ambitions on the European political stage.
Navracsics said after his Commission mandate is done he plans to return to teaching political science in Budapest. He added that he’s “proud of being Hungarian and proud of being European. I’m pro-European. I say in Hungary that I’m probably the most pro-European on the center-right.”
Who’s the boss?
When Navracsics has spoken up to defend Hungary, he’s been quickly slapped down. Navracsics acknowledged that Juncker took him to task in November for objecting to the Commission’s consideration of a citizens’ petition calling on it to impose sanctions on Hungary for alleged breaches of the EU’s fundamental values.
After Navracsics complained that the decision was taken without him, Juncker reminded him in a letter that his loyalty should be to the Commission and not to Orbán. Navracsics now says he was not carrying water for Orbán or Hungary in the discussion. “I didn’t represent any other interest than my interest and my approach to the debate,” he told POLITICO. “I don’t think it’s a double standard, probably an oversensitivity.”
The controversial prime minister keeps popping up as a problem for other Hungarians in EU politics. At a farewell party last year for Péter Györkös, who was leaving his post as Hungary’s EU ambassador, a journalist joked that there’s no job more difficult than being Orbán’s man in Brussels.
“It had a special nature because Orbán is a special politician, and he’s not afraid to be attacked by four of the five parties in the European Parliament,” Györkös said.
The biggest obstacle for his successor, Várhelyi, is staying in the loop on the strategy on refugees pushed by the Commission, which for months has been at loggerheads with Budapest.
Hungarians are still smarting over the EU’s decision last September to push through compulsory relocation of refugees, using a qualified majority vote to overrule Hungary and three other countries which objected to the plan. They were also shocked not to have been consulted when the Commission called a summit of Western Balkan countries on the issue in October.
“This was a big loss of trust,” Várhelyi said. “We’re supposed to work together. They’re not doing this together, there’s a clear preference for bigger and older member states. Since we have a different position, we’re always the last to know.”
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