Souveränismus als Vorwand. Viktor Orbáns Ringen mit dem europäischen Projekt
Sovereignism as a Pretence. Viktor Orbáns’ Struggle with the European Project

Summary/Abstract: Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán nearly ship-wrecked the EU’s summit in December 2020. A new state-of-law mechanism, to be introduced in early 2021, had triggered a veto threat by Hungary and Poland, the two most “illiberal” members of the EU. The right-wing populist governments in Budapest and Warsaw framed the state-of-law mechanism as an infringement of their national sovereignty. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as the leader of the member-state presiding over the rotating European Council at the time, succeeded to forge a difficult compromise with Orbán. This contribution examines the sovereignty concept brought up in the argumentation and discourses of the Orbán government. It turns out that Orbán and his strategists heavily rely on the theoretical concepts of the controversial German legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. It seems that the autocratic rule of the Orbán government, rhetorically justified by a Schmittian sovereignty claim, only serves one purpose: to rob the country and to enrich his family and a small number of crony capitalists, created by him and dependent on him.

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