On Tuesday last week, European Union leaders agreed to a pandemic recovery deal that marks a historic step forward for European integration. By Friday, cronies of Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orban, had effectively shut down the largest remaining independent news website in Hungary. The timing was not a coincidence.
The EU pandemic recovery deal, which includes large-scale collective borrowing and offers grants to states hit hard by the pandemic, contains much for Europhiles to praise. As the French economist Shahin Vallée wrote in the Guardian, “common debt, common expenditure and the possibility of common taxation—which all seemed out of reach over the last decade—were accepted this week unanimously.”
