Policy Brief: CEE Division Over Ukraine Becomes the Top Issue For the EU For 2024

EU dynamics shifted with the election of a pro-EU government in Poland. Despite Hungary’s expected isolation in the EU, PM Orban is a high-risk factor in supporting Ukraine.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• The EU must be able to match declarations of support for Ukraine with actual delivery, especially in the face of a weakening U.S. resolve. The EU must move fast to revamp its arms industry to support Ukraine and build its own resilience to a belligerent Russia and China.
• Internally, the EU faces a discussion on tying further enlargement to treaty changes. Poland’s new PM Donald Tusk poured cold water on such conditionality.
• The EU Commission proposed a Democracy Defence Package on 12 December, the main plank of which is a “foreign interference” law. The package also includes legislative proposals on media freedom and civic involvement in policy-making.
• The proposals have come under criticism from NGOs as too restrictive, while apparently serving Hungary’s ruling Fidesz as an excuse to adopt a draconian “sovereign protection” for muzzling political dissent.
• The EU must find ways to prevent Hungary’s Viktor Orban from sabotaging the strategic security objective of bringing a well-armed and prosperous democratic Ukraine into the bloc. It also faces a prospect of transactional Slovak PM Fico.
• Democratic security resilience will be severely tested not just by Orban, but also the resurging far-right across the EU, Poland’s case becoming an outlier.
• Before the EP elections 2024, EU citizens need reassurances on the EU’s ability to control irregular migration as well as ensuring just energy transition if they are to discard anti-establishment parties. The EU institutions agreed on tighter asylum rules in December.

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