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bne September 2021
built an extensive business relationship with the Lukashenko regime in recent years. He had not been sanctioned therefore by either Washington or the EU despite being one of the few businessmen to return to Russia with sizable investments after Russia’s 2014 economic crisis.
The sanctions may already be having a limited effect. Protasevich was moved to house arrest just a day after they were announced. Some have used this to call for further action. Yet it is worth acknowledging that the strategic landscape has likely been recast. As long as the sanctions remain, Lukashenko will only find funds – and friends – in Russia, and potentially China.
The European Union’s institution of debt financing sanctions on Minsk is a sign that it is no longer willing to partner in
VISEGRAD BLOG:
The EU finally gets tough with Hungary and Poland
Robert Anderson in Prague
Ever since Viktor Orban, Hungary’s radical rightwing leader, seized power in 2010 and began to consolidate his regime, the European Commission has not known how to handle him, particularly when he was joined in the bad boy corner by Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski in 2015.
The EU had never had to deal with a state that was trashing EU values, and there were no effective tools for forcing it to behave.
But now there are signs the Commission has finally found the political will – and the tools – to punish and perhaps stop Hungary and Poland’s slide into authoritarianism.
Over the past decade Orban has been able to thumb his nose at the Commission largely because he was defended by Germany and other states led by fellow members of the European People’s Party (EPP) grouping. Rightwing German politicians, especially from Bavaria’s CSU, had forged close links with the up and coming Fidesz politician soon after the collapse of Communism, and Bavarian-based carmakers Daimler and Audi made the low- tax country their main base in Central Europe.
At first, Orban’s democratic depredations during his previous term in 1998-2002 were quickly forgotten, and he was given the
Opinion 67 Lukashenko’s cross-European geopolitical dance, switching
partners when he has the most to gain.
Belarus is now largely isolated and the EU is now the leading Western party enforcing such an isolation. Both moves may not have a drastic initial impact but carry the potential to reshape Europe’s geopolitical chessboard significantly over the medium term.
Maximilian Hess is head of political risk at Hawthorn Advisors in London. He also serves as a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Follow him on twitter at @zakavkaza
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (left), PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban (right).
benefit of the doubt after the chaotic collapse of the previous Socialist-led government during the global financial crisis.
Eventually, the EU woke up to the threat he posed, and there are currently some 60 active infringement proceedings against his government’s breaches of EU law.
Yet Orban is a past master of evading punishment. Typically, he fights back by pointing out some superficially similar policy in a Western European state, ignoring the fact that when enacted in the Hungarian context of already weakened democratic checks and balances, the policy has a very different impact.
Often he would perform what he himself called a ‘peacock dance’, putting forward an extreme proposal and then eventually backing down, either in a cosmetic way or when the policy had already served its purpose, enabling him to achieve what he intended all along, such as the expulsion of the Central European University (CEU) from Budapest.
In this way, he was able to nibble away at democratic safeguards and human rights, without appearing to mount a frontal attack on the fundamental values of the Union.
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