EU ‘in a state of disintegration’ – Orban
The EU is beginning to disintegrate as decisions made in Brussels are increasingly ignored by member states, now divided between advocates of war and of peace, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
In an interview with Magyar Nemzet newspaper published on Wednesday, Orban said the process was unfolding even as Brussels with its “imperial ambitions’ bureaucracy” pushed to expand its authority over national governments.
”The European Union today is in a state of disintegration …This is how the union falls apart: decisions are made in Brussels, but they are not implemented,” Orban said, noting that non-compliance typically spreads from one country to others.
Asked whether Europe is being reorganized into a war economy, he responded in the affirmative. Orban said the political, economic, and social decline of Western Europe – a process that began in the mid-2000s and accelerated after what he called poor responses to the financial crisis – has left the region unable to compete with faster-developing parts of the world. As a result, he argued, growth is being pursued through the well-known historical pattern of a war economy, which he said explains why Europeans committed themselves to the Ukraine conflict.
Budapest has consistently opposed Brussels’ bellicose policies on Ukraine since the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, including the sanctions on Russia. According to Orban, this has driven up energy prices, making competition “impossible” and essentially “killing” European industry.
He also said that Europe has split into two camps – “the war camp and the peace camp” – and that at present, the pro-war forces are dominant. “Brussels wants war; Hungary wants peace,” Orban stated.
Top EU officials have used claims of an alleged threat from Moscow to justify accelerating militarization. Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the bloc of clinging to the “fantasy” of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, arguing that the EU “does not have a peaceful agenda” and is instead “on the side of war.”
Putin warned that while Russia has no intention of fighting the EU or NATO, the situation could quickly become dire if Western nations launched a war against Russia.
