Why is EU’s rotating presidency praising a country that flipped off the bloc?
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban took a break this week from annoying the EU establishment at home to annoy it abroad.
“For so many years now, the people of Georgia have been striving and fighting for democracy,” unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proclaimed in the wake of the Georgian parliamentary elections. “They have a right to know what happened this weekend.”
Well, since she apparently needs it spelled out, it would seem that 54% of Georgians voted for a populist party that they trust to put their own interests first, above those cheered by the Western establishment. One that has legislatively supported the kind of anti-foreign interference and pro-transparency laws that Queen Ursula is always on about – except when it risks exposing Western shenanigans through NGO proxies in countries bordering Russia, I guess. In which case, Western officials treat foreign interference like a basic human right that Georgia needs to guarantee if it ever wants to join the EU – where they can hear Queen Ursula regularly champion the same anti-meddling that she qualifies as an affront to democracy… in Georgia.
Georgians voted for a party whose officials don’t routinely appear with the EU flag behind them. And anyone who isn’t into that can’t be anything other than pro-Putin, of course.
If, as von der Leyen says, Georgians have been “fighting for democracy,” then it looks like they’ve succeeded. She just doesn’t like the result.
“While voters were offered a choice between 18 candidate lists and candidates could generally campaign freely, Georgia’s parliamentary elections were marred by entrenched polarization and concerns over recently adopted legislation and its impact on fundamental freedoms and civil society, as well as highly divisive campaign rhetoric and widespread reports of pressure on voters,” according to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, citing international election observers. The statement could just as easily describe the current US presidential election campaign, which of course is the gold standard for Western democracy.
Ignoring von der Leyen’s rhetoric, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban flew to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi to personally congratulate the reelected prime minister, winning Georgian Dream party leader Irakli Kobakhidze.
“European politics has its handbook, it is worth knowing: when liberal parties win, there is democracy, when conservatives win, there is not. Because the conservatives won, there will be debates, and they are not to be taken seriously,” Orban said of the EU’s hysterics.
“I also want to congratulate the Georgian government on that while enforcing pro-European politics, you didn’t allow becoming a second Ukraine,” Orban said, referring to Ukraine’s mistake of having allowed the Western establishment to convert it into a flophouse for fighters and weapons targeting Russian interests – to the ultimate detriment of those of the EU citizens. “We greatly value the PM’s devotion to this idea, and I’m confident Georgia will be well-suited to join the EU by the end of this decade,” said Orban, who also happens to be the leader of the country currently holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in a six-month stint that has some in Brussels counting the days left on the clock, if not seconds.
So Orban is defending the concept of the EU, but only as a collection of sovereign and democratic nations rather than as the giant straitjacket that it has become under the pretext of ‘unity’. He’d personally know a thing or two about that.
Earlier this month, in his first big EU Council speech since Budapest assumed the presidency, he availed himself of EU parliamentarians’ undivided attention to straight up tell them that “the European Union needs to change.”
That went over about as well as you might expect. Someone broke out a recording of the Second World War Italian anti-fascist resistance song ‘Bella Ciao’, prompting parliamentary president Roberta Metsola to say, “Hey, which one of you fancies himself the alpha class clown in this giant circus?” Just kidding. She didn’t actually say that. But she did say that “this isn’t Eurovision.” No kidding. If it was Eurovision, then Orban would have been standing there in a dress.
One by one, elected reps lectured Orban on the EU being the house of democracy and freedom. Which is apparently run like a nightclub with a velvet rope with these guys wanting Orban on the other side of it.
Von der Leyen got up to tell Orban off on everything from his arguing that Ukraine needs peace, not more war, to his suggestion that migration needs to be reeled in. She said that Orban’s a big hypocrite because he talks about migration, and yet last year the Hungarian government released a bunch of human traffickers from prison to save money. Looks like Orban in that case basically just treated the EU like the filthy floor of a movie theatre where you walk in and see popcorn and drink cups all over the floor just go, “Oh well, what’s a few more kernels?”
Queen Ursula went on about Ukraine’s interests, where she’s just as democratically elected as in the EU, even though Orban was there to talk about the EU’s own needs around Ukraine, which isn’t the same thing. Not exactly controversial to call out the toll it’s taking when French President Emmanuel Macron has recently said the EU could die economically, and Mario Draghi’s EU competitiveness report also sounded the alarm.
Von der Leyen accused Orban of favoring Russian fuel over the EU’s renewables agenda. In reality, part of the EU’s electricity is coming from renewables, and the rest of it from the pricey US gas that’s killing the EU economy in replacing the cheaper Russian stuff. Gee, why wouldn’t Orban want a piece of that? Orban said that all this virtue signaling is really just smoke and mirrors since the EU hypocrites were still buying Russian fuel through third countries.
If he says that any louder, the EU’s crush, Vladimir Zelensky, might not want to be seen holding hands with them in the schoolyard. And now that he’s in Georgia ‘friendly firing’ truth bombs onto EU brass in his capacity as one of the bloc’s current top officials, it no doubt underscores for Georgians why the nonaligned dating around for which they just voted is better than political marriage.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
