Kit Klarenberg Substack
On April 12th, a political earthquake in Hungary upended 16 years of continuous rule by Viktor Orban. It was a period characterised by ever-mounting and fractious confrontation between Budapest and the European Commission, the EU’s executive body. Now, Orban’s exit has removed a major barrier to EU federalisation, and militarisation. Brussels’ fingerprints are plastered all over his departure from office, and the Commission now evidently perceives an ideal opportunity to exert its will not only over the bloc’s 27 member states, but beyond.
There are countless criticisms that could be levelled against Orban, and his lengthy run in power. He himself proudly characterised his ruling ideology as a fundamentally illiberal, nationalist project. Budapest under his stewardship clashed with Brussels on rule-of-law concerns spanning academic, judicial and media freedom, migration, minority rights, and social justice issues. Yet, Orban also stood firm against ongoing attempts to erode EU member state sovereignty, and promoted opposition across the bloc to construction of a fully federalized, continent-spanning superstate governed by the unelected Commission.
New prime minister Peter Magyar exploded onto Hungary’s political scene in March 2024, having no history of activism or prior public platform. Attacking Orban’s government for corruption while supporting greater EU integration, he was quickly anointed Budapest’s leader-in-waiting by Western politicians and news outlets. His unprecedented rise was significantly assisted by a vast anti-Orban media and civil society ecosystem locally, lavishly funded by the EU. Obvious questions about whether Magyar’s abrupt, stratospheric success was truly organic haven’t been asked in the mainstream.
Over Orban’s last term in office too, the EU waged devastatingly effective, open financial warfare on Hungary. From late 2022 onwards, Brussels began freezing tens of billions in funds owed to Budapest, due to an array of rule-of-law concerns. It represented a significant proportion of the country’s GDP. To unlock these sums and finance everything from infrastructure repairs to stimulus for businesses affected by the COVID19 pandemic, Orban’s government needed to pass 27 separate reforms – dubbed “super milestones”. Authorities rejected many demands outright.
The withheld funds added to already grave economic woes locally, including high inflation, rising unemployment, and stagnant wages. This handed Magyar a highly compelling campaign platform – he promised to instantly unlock the cash upon taking office, when Budapest was again “a fully-fledged member of the EU.” Within days of Magyar’s election victory, a Commission delegation duly visited Hungary to discuss unfreezing over €30 billion in initial assistance. Magyar subsequently boasted how much-needed EU resources would “soon arrive.”
With Hungary brought to heel, the EU Commission is quickly moving to repeat the ploy in neighbouring Serbia and Slovakia, cutting the pair off from sizeable funds to ‘correct’ their behaviour. Both countries have long-frustrated the domestic and international designs of Brussels and Berlin in different ways. With inter-bloc opposition neutralised, never has the Commission been so assertive in pursuing its objectives. The implications for how the EU acts internationally, and its constituent member states and populations progressively unable to resist Brussels’ diktats, are massive.
‘European Continent’
On April 22nd, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen declared: “we must succeed in completing the European continent so that it does not fall under Russian, Turkish or Chinese influence.” A Commission spokesperson clarified von der Leyen’s unprecedentedly combative comments specifically referred to future EU expansion into the West Balkans, much of which formerly comprised Yugoslavia. Opposition to EU membership is widespread throughout the region, especially in Serbia, while the Turkish government formally categorises it as a major foreign policy “priority”.
These statements rankled Ankara, itself a longstanding EU candidate country with strong cultural, economic, and historic ties to the West Balkans. Under von der Leyen’s bold, belligerent vision for future Europe, Turkey will be categorised alongside Beijing and Moscow as an unwelcome regional contaminant. Endless rounds of sanctions have almost completely cut off Russia from the bloc since February 2022, in every way. Concurrently, numerous Chinese investment projects in the EU have been rejected, while import of Beijing’s goods in key sectors is increasingly restricted.
Moreover, less than 24 hours after Orban’s defeat, von der Leyen bombastically called for an end to EU member state veto power on foreign policy matters. This is a deeply troubling shift. Advocates of greater EU federalism and integration – including outspoken, high-ranking Commission apparatchiks – have long-argued for ending the requirement of member state unanimity in sensitive policy areas, including enlargement, defence and security. Many Europeans reject the move. However, no EU member state is now likely to push back.
Under Orban, Budapest recently vetoed an EU membership plan for Ukraine, a €90 billion loan to Kiev, appropriation of frozen Russian assets, bloc-wide bans on importing Moscow’s oil and gas, and other controversial matters. With vetoes done away with, major foreign policy decisions could be made by Brussels with just 15 of the EU’s 27 member states agreeing. Governments and/or citizens unsupportive of these moves would have little recourse to oppose the changes, even if directly affected by them.
This could eventually extend to construction of a unified EU army. In October 2025, the EU Commission’s Defence Industry and Space department published the so-called “Readiness Roadmap 2030”. It directed member states to invest heavily in their militaries and war-fighting capabilities, while establishing joint bloc projects, such as a European drone force, in formal alliance with Ukraine. Meanwhile, in January EU Defence and Space Commissioner Andrius Kubilius proposed creating a 100,000-strong standing European rapid reaction force.
That same month, laws requiring German men aged 17 – 45 to obtain approval from the Bundeswehr if they intend to leave the country for more than three months came into effect. The move reintroduces military conscription, if not enough citizens voluntarily enlist. Due to widespread outcry, the requirement was dropped in early April. Weeks later though, officials in Berlin formally unveiled ominous Bundeswehr strategy documents, outlining plans for Germany to possess Europe’s biggest army by 2039. The papers identify Russia as Europe’s gravest threat.
Before vetoes have even been axed, EU member state opposition to the Commission’s foreign agenda is already precipitously shrinking. Brussels’ threats of financial penalties have prompted Slovak premier Robert Fico to jettison all objections to loaning Ukraine tens of billions. He also intends to visit Kiev, to prove his commitment to supposed European values. Given Fico was elected on a popular platform of ending his country’s financial and material support for Ukraine, and undoing EU-encouraged anti-Russian sanctions, the domestic implications could be significant.
‘Russian Disinformation’
In August 2023, the highly controversial EU Digital Services Act came into force. Under its terms, the EU Commission, member state election authorities, and EU-funded NGOs are granted enormous power to police online speech, under the cover of countering “disinformation”. Repeatedly in recent years, Brussels has activated a little-known “rapid response system” around European elections, to demand social networks censor supposedly problematic content, and ban offending users. If social networks fail to act as required by the Commission, they face massive fines and other penalties.
The strict EU-wide censorship regime established by the DSA’s adoption operated almost entirely hidden from European citizens, until the US Senate Judiciary Committee published a report in February this year exposing the Act’s abuse by Brussels. While the DSA has been used to compel platforms to remove false and hateful content, it is also routinely exploited to censor dissenting viewpoints, including Eurosceptic speech. The EU Commission can resultantly exert extraordinary online narrative control within member states and across the continent, at particularly sensitive political junctures.
Slovakia’s September 2023 parliamentary election was hotly-contested, with Fico’s Smer party under relentless attack by pro-Western politicians, NGOs, and media outlets. Fico’s policies are locally popular – many Slovaks even perceive him as too soft – and he won cleanly. Yet, the Judiciary Committee report reveals Brussels engaged in determined skullduggery via the DSA to deny Smer victory. In the months leading up to the vote, the Commission secretly submitted a variety of censorship requests to major social networks via the rapid response system.
Over the week prior to election day, this activity intensified substantially. The EU Commission provided TikTok with spreadsheets listing supposedly “problematic” Slovak accounts publishing “political content”, to be suppressed if not outright banned. In many cases, these users had seemingly done nothing objectionable. This included a “well-known and popular” Slovak influencer primarily publishing “non-problematic” posts, “focused on entertainment.” Local users sharing political humour, and a Communist party member, were among other apparently innocuous accounts also in the Commission’s censorship crosshairs.
The rapid response mechanism was likewise put into play around the 2024 European parliament elections. Underscoring the vote’s importance from the EU Commission’s perspective, representatives of social networks were explicitly warned behind-closed-doors Brussels would “take enforcement actions” if they failed to act on censorship requests, in the vote’s leadup. Under direct threat of financial and legal retaliation, Google, Meta and TikTok purged a vast quantity of “misinformation” from their platforms at the Commission’s direct behest during the campaign
TikTok alone went on to censor over 45,000 pieces of content. Problematically, EU parliamentarians vote for the EU Commission’s president, and confirm its commissioners. The Commission was thus via the DSA ideally positioned to insulate itself and EU policies from online criticism throughout Europe, while promoting pro-EU political parties running for election. The DSA’s potential impact on Orban’s loss is difficult to quantify. On March 16th an EU spokesperson activated the “rapid response system”, to deal with purported “Russian disinformation” in Hungary’s election.
‘Romanian Democracy’
In December 2024, Romania’s constitutional court cancelled the country’s ongoing presidential election, after upstart outsider Calin Georgescu won the vote’s first round. Running on a Eurosceptic, nationalist platform – including ending Bucharest’s financial and military support for the nearby Ukraine proxy war – contemporary polls showed Georgescu was en route to becoming President via landslide. The shocking annulment was justified by authorities on the grounds a supposedly wide-ranging cloak-and-dagger Russian influence campaign conducted via TikTok had promoted his candidacy, skewing the vote’s result.
No evidence supporting this incendiary charge ever surfaced. Still, EU and US officials publicly endorsed the election’s autocratic voiding. Western media outlets unquestioningly reported that the cancellation was entirely proper, due to malign Muscovite meddling. A contemporary BBC analysis nonetheless admitted Georgescu was hugely – and organically – popular with Romanians, at home and abroad. The British state broadcaster conceded “fatigue” with Bucharest’s pro-NATO political establishment is common locally, and among Romania’s massive diaspora.
Devastating Westernising ‘reforms’ enacted since the fall of Communism mean Romanians harbour ever-multiplying legitimate grievances, entirely unaddressed in the mainstream. Per the BBC, in the annulment’s aftermath, “even those who feared a President Georgescu – and believe Russia was backing him – now worry about the precedent just set for Romanian democracy.” Suspicion widely abounded locally the vote’s cancellation was influenced by foreign actors. The Senate Judiciary report amply exposes how Brussels played a central role in sabotaging Bucharest’s 2024 presidential election.
Before, during and after the presidential vote, “the European Commission took its most aggressive censorship steps” yet uncovered. With the rapid response mechanism activated in advance, authorities in Bucharest “repeatedly made content takedown requests” to social media platforms, using “expansive interpretations” of the DSA and local laws. This extended to demanding TikTok block videos of Georgescu not merely for Romanian audiences, but globally. The social network was wary of the “potential for political influence” on the election, posed by EU-enforced “unjustified removal of legal content.”
For example, TikTok was ordered to censor social media posts purely on the basis they were “disrespectful” to Bucharest’s governing Social Democratic Party, with no stated legal rationale. Once Georgescu prevailed in the first round, DSA-inspired censorship orders became “even more aggressive.” Romanian regulators were emboldened to order TikTok to purge “all materials” featuring images of Georgescu from its platform. In concert, EU-funded NGOs in Romania and the wider region dispatched spreadsheets to social networks “containing hundreds of censorship requests.”
While some of the content earmarked for suppression “may have been genuinely objectionable,” much of the material in question simply set out Georgescu’s policy stances. Even more damningly, Bucharest and the EU Commission pressured TikTok to validate the narrative that its platform was illicitly exploited by the Kremlin to promote Georgescu. After extensive trawling though, TikTok’s internal security team found zero indication of any “coordinated influence operation” to boost his candidacy whatsoever.
TikTok’s repeated appeals to Romanian authorities and the EU Commission that Russia hadn’t meddled in the 2024 presidential election were ignored, and remained concealed from public view. In a perverse twist too, the Commission thereafter launched a formal investigation under the DSA into TikTok’s moderation practices for political speech, due to the platform’s supposed role in subverting Romanian democracy. Georgescu was banned from standing in a re-run, which led to the election of a pro-EU coalition government. The administration collapsed on May 5th.
‘Change Policies’
This followed weeks of constantly ratcheting political crisis, during which left-leaning ministers within the ruling coalition resigned over the government’s locally-despised economic austerity measures. Brussels has made Romania unlocking almost €2 billion in state aid contingent on implementing savage public spending cuts, wage and pension freezes, and tax hikes. With public anger rising and the country teetering on the brink of a major recession, on April 23rd EU financial services commissioner Maria Luis Albuquerque quietly journeyed to Bucharest for the first time.
During her visit, she met with representatives of Romania’s finance ministry, stock exchange, National Bank, private investment firms, and trade unions, to discuss “the economic future of Europe.” Albuquerque’s presence was perceived locally as a clear signal Brussels is keeping a close eye on developments, and expects business as usual from Bucharest come what may. The EU Commission surely has little to fear. Due to the overturned November 2024 election, perspectives critical of NATO and the EU have been ruled contrary to the country’s constitution.
Despite surging public agitation for radical change, any Romanian political candidate or party espousing those perspectives is now barred from seeking, let alone occupying, high office. It must never be forgotten how in the wake of Syriza winning a clear mandate to end Brussels-imposed austerity in Greece in January 2015, European Commission vice president Jyrki Katainen bluntly declared: “We don’t change policies depending on elections.” As Greece was part of the eurozone, its government’s economic and political agenda was controlled by Brussels and Berlin, not Athens.
Syriza had little choice but to break all its campaign pledges, and reverse its longstanding ideological positions. The Greek people suffered immensely, and still do. Conversely, Western banks that recklessly loaned vast sums to Athens to fuel an unsustainable economic boom profited immensely from the eurozone crisis, and consequent austerity in Greece. The EU and IMF provided Athens with bailout loans that repaid German and other European lenders, while leaving Greece even more heavily indebted. Unemployment, poverty, and brain drain remain rampant today.
Despite the misery inflicted on Athens via membership of the euro, the single currency has engulfed further EU member states in the years since. Lithuania joined in 2015, Croatia eight years later, and Bulgaria in 2026. Czechia, Denmark, Poland, Romania and Sweden are all expected to join in due course. Magyar’s Hungary is now committed to doing so by 2030. The stage is set for “completing the European continent,” in von der Leyen’s sinister phrase, without citizens or governments anywhere standing in the way.
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