After the meeting of European Heads of State and Government in Brussels on Monday May 30 and Tuesday May 31, the Twenty-Seven thought they had found a compromise on the sixth package of sanctions against Moscow. This was without reckoning with Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, who, on Wednesday 1is June, issued a new demand and snatched a final concession: on Thursday, the Europeans resolved to remove from the list of sanctioned personalities the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, who unambiguously supports the invasion Russian from Ukraine.
It is an understatement to say that, in this sequence, Budapest did not respect the grammar of Community affairs: if the negotiations carried out during a European Council can be difficult, a political agreement, once sealed, cannot be undone. Budapest had certainly raised the case of Patriarch Kirill before the meeting, but at no time did Mr Orban, known for his closeness to Vladimir Putin, then share it with his counterparts, preferring to focus on energy issues, which are highly complex.
On this point, the Twenty-Seven agreed to temporarily exclude Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria from their decision on an embargo on Russian oil, thus taking into account the specificities of these countries and their heavy dependence on Russian black gold. For the rest – restrictive measures on banks, television channels and new oligarchs and those close to the Kremlin – the final adjustments had been made before the European Council and the file was closed. At least, that’s what we thought in Brussels.
“We all deplore this decision to remove Kirill from the sanctioned list. But we were not going to sacrifice a substantial package of sanctions on the altar of the Orthodox patriarch,” commented a diplomat. Why was Viktor Orban so keen to spare the Russian cleric? “It would affect the religious freedom of communities in Hungary, which is sacrosanct,” he explained in a radio interview on May 6, after “having received a letter from the Hungarian Orthodox community asking him to do everything to oppose it”. A community that represents only 0.1% of the Hungarian population, according to the last census of 2011. But Mr. Orban, himself a not very practicing Calvinist, has been strong since the refugee crisis of 2015 to defend Christian identity. in Europe. He also shares with the Russian Church an obsession against the LGBT community.
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