In the broader view, Hungarian foreign policy follows the centers of European power in Germany and France. Over the course of several decades, Hungary has embraced European integration, the NATO alliance and Atlanticism. However, the government of Viktor Orban has diverged from these goals and has embraced the politics of another country on the European periphery: the United Kingdom. Hungary has followed the practice of England in one key paradigm: wanting benefits from membership in the European Union without accepting the costs and responsibilities inherent to membership in the block. Both England and Hungary exist on the physical periphery of Europe (albeit on opposite ends) but they also share an ideological distance from the heart of the European project and a recalcitrance to either fully accept or fully reject European integration, an embrace, in other words, of “selective integration” (Zimmerman and Durs 208)
Britain’s embrace of “a la carte” EU membership, in which it not only rejects the holistic package of traditional membership, but rejects the specific costs associated with specific benefits has caused friction during EU negotiations over Brexit. The referendum itself, at least as fought by the ultimately victorious Leave campaign, was replete with this incoherent view of obligations and benefits. The infamous bus adverts that promised “£350 million a week for the NHS” in diverted EU funds is emblematic of this misunderstanding. Current British policy is premised on taking for granted the benefits, subsidies and trade advantages of EU membership while viewing the costs obligations and loss of sovereignty resulting from the EU’s pooled sovereignty model. Both British politics more broadly and the Brexit fight involved chafing at the perception that the EU was subsuming Britain’s once vaunted role on the world stage. This combined one-sided acceptance of integration and feared loss of sovereignty is mirrored by Hungary.
Hungary follows England in the general premise of this policy outlook and sometimes in specific policy conflicts. The Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó declared his government’s deep regrets about Britain’s exit from the European Union because he contended that the UK was a natural ally for Hungary’s resistance to aspects of the European Union’s policy consensus. In addition to this direct alignment in rejecting further integration, Hungary has mirrored the UK’s opposition to accepting EU membership as a holistic unit.
The Hungarian economy is substantially dependent on EU subsidies, in fact to an even greater extent than England’s. The Hungarian government in particular has dispensed subsidies to political allies (likely corruptly). Yet Hungary has chafed at EU attempts to dictate Hungarian policy on a range of issues. Hungary has strongly resisted attempts by the European Commission and European Court of Justice to reign in potentially anti-democratic abuses of the country’s recent re-writes of its constitution. Similarly, it has resisted EU attempts to force Hungary into accepting (relatively minute) quotas of refugees and asylum seekers.
Walls and Moats
There is a surprising and unique symmetry in Britain and Hungary’s position on immigration: their reliance of physical barriers over more traditional tools of immigration policy; this reliance has led to similar conflicts with the institutions of the European Union and fellow European nations. The barrier employed by the UK is natural, the English Channel, and has long been an important feature of European immigration policy. Refugee and migrant camps across the channel in Calais, France have long featured as a humanitarian crisis in Europe, the Channel, which can only be crossed by the Chunnel trains or ferry, provides a clear blockage point for migrants trying to enter the United Kingdom. Hungary, on the other hand, has constructed its barrier, a 500-kilometer long, 4 meter tall border fence on its southern border. This fence has, according the Hungarian government, contributed to a 99% drop in illegal immigration to Hungary.
The conflicts that this has caused Hungary with the institutions of the European Union are sharp and clear. The most direct confrontation on this issue area has been with the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the subject of migrant rights and Hungary’s obligations to asylum seekers. The ECJ process is the final stage of a process initiated by the European Commission in 2015. The formal complaint argued that Hungary kept migrants in “transition zones” for excessively long periods and failed to provide proper legal representation.
Hungary’s confrontation with ECJ is mirrored by ideologically parallel conflicts with the European Commission. The commission has complained (Furedi 2017) that Hungary has not met its obligations under the various EU treaties which govern member states. Specifically, Hungary has refused to honor EU requests for it to take its quota of asylum seekers – a measure developed to relieve border state like Italy and Greece of a disproportionate burden in resettling refugees (especially given the standard in international law that asylum seekers must be processed in the country where they first arrive).
These dual conflicts with two of the key institutions of the EU provide a mirror image of Britain’s conflicts during the Brexit negotiations. While Hungary conflicts with the EU from within, and Britain will so do so from outside the block, they both share a politicized and conditional acceptance of European integration. Both countries have also embodied the dual legacies of “technocracy (from the EU) and populism (in reaction to it) (Zimmerman and Durs 218).
Bibliography
Szijjártó, Peter. ‘Migration Is Not a Fundamental Human Right’ Interview by Amanda House. Breitbart, July 2nd of 2018
Zimmermann, Hubert, and Andreas Dür, eds. Key controversies in European integration. Macmillan International Higher Education, 2016.
Furedi, Frank. Populism and the European Culture Wars: The Conflict of Values Between Hungary and the EU. Routledge, 2017.
Daniel,
Beginning with question one I thought you did an excellent job making a holistic argument in comparing Hungary to the United Kingdom. I drew a nice difference to my own posting because despite the fact they are on opposite sides of Europe, Hungary still follows their lead. However, in my case, Portugal most closely follows the Spanish and that is most due in part to the closeness geographically. I also agreed with the particularly emphasis you put on the mutually shared fear of loss of sovereignty. I thought that was a very astute conclusion that you made and I find that throughout all of the things both those countries do from a foreign policy standpoint you can really see that sentiment play out. All in all, I thought you did an excellent job with question one however what I would have done to make it better is that I would talked a bit more about the current state of affairs within Hungary itself because you can draw even more comparisons to the United Kingdom and Brexit just by talking about Viktor Orban and what he has been doing with Hungary.
In terms of the second question, I found that to be extremely interesting to read. This definitely not a topic I am totally seasoned in, but I will try to give it my best assessment. Overall, I thought you did a nice job explaining the symmetry between the United Kingdom’s and Hungary’s opinion on foreign immigration. I like how you talked about one specific issue that Hungary is facing right now, however it would have been nice to have heard about another example, but all in all you did a great job.
Very interesting cross comparison of the political situation in the United Kingdom and Hungary, it was definitely not the first thought that would’ve come to my mind. It was very compelling to your argument how you drew in the lamentations of the Hungarian delegation regarding the loss of the U.K. as they see each other as natural allies in their shared euroscepticism. If anything it might be nice to briefly mention the different reasons that Hungary and the U.K. came to this perspective, namely how Hungary’s euroscepticism is based off of xenophobia while the British seem to have more economic concerns about the E.U. Additionally, it might behove you to bring in reference to the French National Front and their ideology which is more similar to the Hungarian governments than the British government.