MEPs from the Volt party in the European Parliament submitted a proposed “action plan” earlier this week, as reported by Politico. Among the plan’s nine points is a call to strip Hungary of its guaranteed voting rights as a member of the European Union.
Volt is a pan-European federalist party that favors strengthening and centralizing the European Union’s authority over its member states.
Volt’s call to deprive Hungary of its right to veto all decisions made by the EU, which is a fundamental right guaranteed in the bloc’s founding treaties, is doubtless a response to Viktor Orbán’s veto of €20 billion in military aid that Brussels had wanted to send to Ukraine this week. This aid was intended to partially compensate for the United States’ recent suspension of aid to the country as part of the Trump administration’s attempts to force an end to the conflict.
Orbán has been strongly critical of the EU’s support for Ukraine from the outset of the current war. He has frequently used his country’s veto powers in an effort to pressure the bloc to stop arming Ukraine and instead force it to come to the negotiating table.
Other points in Volt’s proposal were a call for the formation of a European army, as is being discussed by others in the European Parliament, as well as a revision of the bloc’s treaties to give it greater authority in matters of defense. Also included is a suggestion to make Kaja Kallas, the European Commission’s current Vice President as well as its High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, an official foreign minister for the EU.
Given that Volt has only five MEPs in the European Parliament, its suggestions are unlikely to have much effect. They nevertheless reflect the growing frustration in the bloc with Hungary’s ongoing efforts to stop the war.
This is not the first time that the idea of depriving Hungary of its voting rights has been floated in European circles. Last summer, 63 MEPs demanded that Hungary’s rights be suspended in response to Orbán’s diplomatic visits to Kyiv, Moscow, and Beijing while his country held the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
