János Bóka, the European affairs minister, said on Thursday that the European Union’s last five years have been a “failure”, arguing that the bloc was facing structural problems and poor decision-making “in a well-functioning system”.
Bóka told a conference that certain poor decisions could be chalked up to the EU leadership’s “incompetence”, saying this meant that the bloc required new leadership. He added, however, that this would not be enough to solve the EU’s problems due to its structural shortcomings. He said the EU’s institution-driven and bureaucratic functioning had taken on “a life of its own”, and European institutions now saw themselves as political players with political agendas. The EU’s failures also extended to the matters of peace and security, competitiveness, the management of the migration crisis and agriculture, Bóka told the event organised by the XXI. Század Intézet. Meanwhile, ruling Fidesz MEP Tamás Deutsch also addressed the same conference, and said the EU should go back to being “a peace project of national and European sovereignty”. It should be “united in diversity, a cooperation of equal member states, European, democratic and free”, he said. Deutsch said that after Hungary’s 20 years of EU membership, the bloc’s problems were bigger than they appeared because its 15 member states at the time had been unprepared for the 2004 enlargement and “Europe’s reunification”, and because the Western European elite’s mindset was determined “by the centuries-old mentality that they are better, richer and more skilled than us in everything”. But Hungary, he said, “hasn’t come to the point of ending our relationship with the EU, because now is the time to turn to it with even greater love, care, and momentum”.