Brussels diary: ‘Budapest Boris’ fails to dent EU show of unity

The summit was nearly over before it began. As several European Union leaders waited in the conference room on Thursday morning for the rest of their colleagues to join them and begin the meeting, European Council president Charles Michel tweeted: “We have a deal”, followed by the obligatory hashtag: #Unity.

Since December, when Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban put the kibosh on the EU’s plans to support Ukraine to the tune of a further €50 billion over the next four years, it had been a case of #disunity. On decisions such as these, the European Council operates on the basis of unanimity – everyone has to agree or there’s no deal. That’s why they sometimes take so long, the wrangling going on until the early hours. That’s what happened in December – Orban wouldn’t budge, and so Michel had to summon leaders back for a special summit to have another go.

In the meantime, there was a lot of Hungarian arm-twisting. But Orban loves fighting with the EU – he regularly poses as the scourge of the Brussels bureaucrats, a sort of Budapest Boris – and until Thursday morning he was refusing to agree. Entering the summit venue, many of the other 26 heads of government made no attempt to hide their irritation. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar suggested he was abusing the EU’s requirement for unanimity, because his veto was not being exercised “in good faith”. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk told reporters that Europe had “Orban fatigue, not Ukraine fatigue”.

But by the previous Wednesday evening, when many of the leaders gathered for a tribute to former commission chief Jacques Delors (once famously addressed by the Sun newspaper as “Up Yours, Dolors!”), the pressure on Orban was becoming intense. He had one-on-one meetings with the French president Emmanuel Macron and the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, increasingly an important figure in the EU’s power games.

Trump’s week in court: Gasps and a pick-up in pace as Hope Hicks is called

---

Supermarket wines: Two great Italian wines to try

---

Brendan O’Connor brings his contrary streak to a cosy conversation about immigration

---

John FitzGerald: An attempt to buy the next election with a giveaway budget would be a gross miscalculation

---

On Thursday morning, the final showdown: but not at the council, rather before it at a meeting with Macron, Meloni, German chancellor Olaf Scholz, the aforementioned Michel and commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. Waiting upstairs, the rest of the leaders, Varadkar among them, while the real business of the summit was being done in the room with Tricky Viki.

Well, sure everyone was only delighted when the news came in: panic over. A sigh of relief in Kyiv. In comes Orban, claiming vindication. The truth was he caved in, though, and everyone knew it. But Leo and lads were entitled to wonder – we came all the way here for this?

Oh, there was other work to be done, it’s true. Agreement on some budget changes – more money for keeping out illegal migrants and a few other things. There was a discussion about Gaza, in which Varadkar advocated reconsidering the EU’s trade agreements with Israel. A discussion about the unhappy farmers, who at that very moment appeared to be making a spirited attempt to set fire to the European Parliament (though to be honest, there’s more than a few of the leaders might have some sneaking sympathy with that objective).

Afterwards, von der Leyen led a delegation to meet the farmers. Varadkar was home by teatime. Normally he loves summits. But this was just an anticlimax. Don’t worry; there’ll be another one soon.

The rest of the leaders all skedaddled fairly lively, muttering. “They’re all pretty annoyed with Orban,” one official confessed. #billynomates

• Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
• Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
• Our In The News podcast is now published daily – Find the latest episode here