The result is that Orbán has consolidated excessive influence in Brussels, which he takes advantage of to boycott EU action from within. His latest coup: unreservedly supporting the 28-point peace plan agreed upon by the US and Moscow, which Brussels considered unacceptable and from which even Donald Trump has ended up distancing himself.
The plenary session of the European Parliament approved this Tuesday – by a large majority of 415 votes in favor, 193 against and 28 abstentions – a harsh report in which it warns that the persistent violations of the rule of law in Hungary (country that they call “hybrid electoral autocracy regime”) threaten European values and the EU legal order.
The report has been backed by the ‘Grand Coalition’ formed by Christian Democrats, Socialists, Liberals and Greens, which on this occasion has been joined by the Left group.
The three radical right groups voted against: the Patriots for Europe – founded by Orbán and in which Vox is also active -; Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists; and Europe of Sovereign Nations.
In particular, MEPs criticize the Orbán Government’s interference in justice, the existence of clientelistic networks and corruption, the misuse of European funds and attacks on civil society.
Among the other problems pointed out by Parliament These include the government’s systematic weakening of the Hungarian National Judicial Council, threats to academic freedom, the allocation of state advertising to pro-government media, and the de facto constitutional ban on Pride marches.
The report demands that the Commission make public as soon as possible the results of its investigation into an alleged Hungarian spy network in the European institutions and the role played in it by Orbán’s current commissioner, Oliver Várhelyi.
Finally, the European Parliament warns about political content generated by artificial intelligence in view of the 2026 elections. Among them, the deliberate publication of videos deepfake on social networks linked to Orbán’s party and campaign, with the aim of confusing voters and discrediting adversaries.
Parliament accuses Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission and the rest of the governments of being incapable of stopping Orbán’s authoritarian drift and protecting the rule of law in Hungary.
“The lack of decisive action by the Commission and Council against Hungary has allowed the continued erosion of democracy and the rule of law. The EU cannot allow Hungary’s autocratization to continue“, protested the Dutch Green Tineke Strik, rapporteur of the report.
In the previous debate before the plenary session, the Commissioner for Justice, Michael McGrath, defended himself against criticism and recalled that Budapest has 18 billion euros blocked right now and has definitively lost 1 billion of its initial allocation of cohesion funds due to this authoritarian drift.
The Community Executive has also opened a large number of infringement procedures against Hungary in areas such as “the rights of civil society organizations, academic freedom, freedom of the media, the rights of migrants and asylum seekers or the rights of LGTBIQ people.”
But none of this has made the Orbán Government change course. The last recourse left to the EU is to press the so-called ‘nuclear button’: go to the end in the application of article 7 of the Treaty and suspend Hungary’s voting rights due to systematic violations of the rule of law.
At the request of the European Parliament, the EU launched the Article 7 sanctions procedure against Hungary in September 2018. Since then, the General Affairs Council has held a total of 9 hearings on the democratic deterioration under Víktor Orbán, but they remain stuck in the procedure.
Suspending Hungary’s voting rights in the Council requires the unanimous support of the rest of the member states, and Orbán currently has the support of the Slovak Robert Fico.
Basically, European leaders are betting everything on the defeat of their Fidesz party in the April 2026 elections. All polls now give a wide lead to the opposition leader, Péter Hungarianwho was part of Orbán’s circle but ended up leaving it with complaints of corruption and authoritarianism.
The risk that the EU runs is that more like-minded governments arrive in Budapest (the next could be that of Andrej Babis in Slovenia), which will definitively prevent acting against the democratic deterioration in Hungary if Orbán wins again.