EU’s rotten Hungarian core by Emma Schneider

When Hungary entered the European Union in 2004 as a full member, it was already an open secret that the country was far from fulfilling the necessary criteria. The ideals of equality, justice, freedom of speech, and a truly independent press were, at best, aspirational promises rather than concrete realities. Yet, political maneuvering and economic ambitions trumped principle. Angela Merkel, with her unshakable pragmatism, saw Hungary’s accession as a strategic move to bolster the newly introduced Euro currency. It was a gamble, one that has aged poorly, like a cheap bottle of Tokaji left uncorked in the sun.

Now, twenty-one years later, the European Union finds itself shackled to a member state that violates every democratic principle upon which the union was supposedly built. Hungary, under the iron grip of Viktor Orbán, has become a cautionary tale of what happens when authoritarianism is allowed to fester unchecked within a democratic framework. The very mechanisms that were designed to strengthen democracy in Europe, economic incentives, diplomatic pressure, and judicial oversight, have been weaponized by Orbán’s regime to cement its autocratic rule.

Make no mistake, Hungary is no longer a democracy. It is a pseudo-dictatorship dressed in the tattered rags of European respectability. Independent media has been systematically dismantled, opposition voices silenced, the judiciary compromised, and corruption has metastasized through every level of governance. Elections are held, yes but in the same way they were held in the Soviet Union: a carefully orchestrated theater designed to maintain the illusion of legitimacy. Orbán’s Fidesz party controls the narrative, the economy, and the very levers of power that should be checking his rule.

And the European Union? A bureaucratic behemoth that stumbles around, wagging its finger while clutching its purse strings in impotent frustration. Sanctions? Please. Threats of cutting funding? A joke. Time and again, the EU has proven itself incapable or unwilling to deal with its Hungarian problem. Brussels is caught in a web of its own making, paralyzed by its commitment to unity at all costs, even if that unity is rotting from within.

The great tragedy is not just that Orbán has hijacked Hungary’s future. It’s that he has dragged the entire European project into a slow descent towards moral and political decay. The EU was meant to be a beacon of democratic values, a bastion against the ghosts of Europe’s authoritarian past. Instead, it now harbors a government that openly flirts with fascism, attacks LGBTQ+ rights, demonizes migrants, and echoes the ethno-nationalist rhetoric of an era many believed was long buried.

Orbán is not just a Hungarian problem he is a European one. His brand of nationalist populism has infected other parts of the continent, emboldening leaders and parties who see in him a roadmap to power. The longer the EU tolerates his defiance, the clearer the message it sends: democracy is negotiable, as long as you play the economic game well enough.

Hungary has, in effect, become the EU’s Trojan horse of authoritarianism, proving that once a member state chooses to abandon democracy, the EU lacks the teeth to do anything about it. This is no longer about Hungary alone it is about whether the European Union itself has the will to survive as an institution built on values rather than mere economic convenience. Will Brussels finally acknowledge that democracy within the EU is not an optional accessory but a fundamental principle? Or will it allow the cancer of authoritarianism to spread further until the very concept of European unity is meaningless?

The European Union stands at a crossroads. Either it finds the courage to confront its own failures and expel the rot within, or it continues its slow drift into irrelevance, eroded from within by the very forces it was meant to counter. Hungary’s membership is no longer just a political mistake; it is a moral failure that threatens the very soul of the European experiment. The question is no longer whether Hungary belongs in the EU it is whether the EU can still claim to stand for anything at all.