Scroll to the top

{{ subpage.title }}

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban attends a European Union summit in Brussels, Belgium February 1, 2024.

REUTERS/Johanna Geron

Hungarian government roiled by sex abuse scandal

Don’t look now, but one of Europe’s biggest defenders of family values is embroiled in a scandal over the sexual abuse of children. In recent days, Hungary’s proudly “illiberal” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has seen his president and justice minister – both women – resign over the pardon of an orphanage director accused of covering up sexual abuse claims.

Read moreShow less

Volodymyr Zelensky

Annie Gugliotta

Ukraine faces threat from Western flank

While visiting Buenos Aires on Sunday for the inauguration of Argentina’s new president Javier Milei, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was able to buttonhole Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Cameras caught an unimpressed-looking Zelensky sharing his thoughts with a defensive-looking Orban. We don’t know what he said – Zelensky said later that it was a “frank” exchange – but we can guess that the Ukrainian was calling Orban out for acting on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is seeking to gain through politics what he has so far failed to gain on the battlefield: Ukraine’s submission.

Read moreShow less

Demonstrators drape the national flag of Israel on the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.

Reuters

What We’re Watching: Bibi’s defiance, US strikes in Syria, Lula’s China visit, Putin’s Hungary refuge, India vs. free speech

Bibi’s not backing down

Israelis waited with bated breath on Thursday evening as news broke that PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu was preparing to brief the nation after another “day of disruption” saw protesters block roads and strike over the government’s proposed judicial reforms.

The trigger for the impromptu public address was a meeting between Bibi and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, also from the ruling Likud Party, who has voiced increasing concern that the looming judicial reform would threaten Israel’s national security, particularly as more and more army reservists are refusing to show up for training.

That never happened. While he talked about healing divisions, a defiant Netanyahu came out and said he will proceed to push through the reform, which, among other things, would give the government an automatic majority on appointing Supreme Court judges. This came just a day after the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed a bill blocking the attorney general from declaring Netanyahu unfit for office due to a conflict of interest over his ongoing legal woes and his bid to dilute the power of the judiciary. In response, the attorney general released a letter Friday saying Netanyahu's involvement in judicial reform is "illegal," suggesting a much-dreaded constitutional crisis may have begun.

Two things to look out for in the days ahead: First, what does Defense Minister Gallant do next? If he threatens to – or does – resign, it could set off subsequent defections and be a game changer. Second, how do the markets respond? Indeed, markets rallied Thursday before Bibi’s address in hopes that the government was set to backtrack on the reforms that are spooking investors, but the shekel value slumped after the speech.

Read moreShow less

Moroccan fans gather on the Champs Elysees in Paris to celebrate Morocco s qualification for the semifinals of the World Cup.

Benjamin Beraud / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

What We're Watching: Morocco plays French politics, 11th-hour EU/Hungary deal, big energy milestone

Atlas Lions vs. French far-right

When reigning champion France takes on underdog Morocco in the World Cup semifinals on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron will be in the stands. And whatever happens on the pitch it’s almost certain to cause tremors for him at home. The “Rocky Balboa” success of Morocco’s “Atlas Lions” – the first Arab or African team ever to make it this far in a World Cup – has struck a chord with millions of first- and second-generation French citizens of Arab and African origin. The worry is that a small minority of those fans may riot in the streets after the match — regardless of whether Morocco wins or loses — as they did last weekend in Paris after first Morocco beat Portugal and then France defeated England in the quarterfinals. Popular far-righters like TV provocateur and former presidential frontrunner Éric Zemmour will surely seize on any unrest to advance their calls for tighter restrictions on immigration. And that will cause a problem for Macron himself, who’s under pressure from the French right to pass a new law targeting illegal immigrants.

Read moreShow less

Malala Yousafzai speaks during the Transforming Education Summit on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, New York.

Reuters

What We’re Watching: UNGA meets amid global crises, Hungary scrambles to secure EU funds, protests persist in Iran

UNGA high-level talks begin

World leaders are gathering at the United Nations headquarters in New York this week for the annual General Assembly. The event kicked off Monday with a summit on education. On the plus side, they’re attending in person for the first time since the pandemic began. On the down side, the world is as divided as it’s been at any time since the Cold War. An overarching item on the agenda will be the ongoing war in Ukraine — debate will focus not only on how to end the war, but also the extent to which the nations of the world are willing to hold Russia accountable for starting the conflict and for potential war crimes. A second but related issue is the ongoing global food crisis, which has been worsened by the war in Ukraine despite a recent agreement to resume grain shipments from Ukrainian ports. The UN World food program is worried food prices could continue to rise over the next five years. Third is climate change, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that “the message to world leaders is clear: lower the temperature — now.”

Read moreShow less
Europe’s oil sanctions and a shifting Russian war narrative to come
Watch For A Shifting War Narrative | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Europe’s oil sanctions and a shifting Russian war narrative to come

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and I am back in New York City with a Quick Take to kick off the week. And the big news, a hundred days in just about continues to be, yes, the Russian war in Ukraine. And most importantly, in the last 24 hours, the sixth round of sanctions agreement coming from the Europeans, most importantly, essentially an oil boycott.

Now there's a lot of back and forth on what exactly this means because the Hungarians, with Viktor Orban, much more aligned with the Russian president and also very dependent on energy from Russia, was extremely obstreperous and basically refused to participate in the deal. So they got an extension and that extension is temporary but undefined.

What that basically means is that the boycott is on oil that's transferred through ships as opposed to by pipe. And that means that a bunch of the East Europeans will be excluded from it, will still be buying Russian oil. But the reality is, two thirds of all the oil that Europe gets from Russia is already going to be cut out. And if you add to that, what the Germans and the Poles are doing, their pledges to wind down their own pipeline imports by the end of the year, you're talking about 90% of Russian crude to Europe is now going to be boycotted. That's a very big deal. That's a very big cost, billions and billions of dollars, to the Russians every year. Some of that they'll be able to sell at a discount to other countries around the world. Some of it they won't because there's going to be a challenge when most of the ships that they can get the oil out come from Europe and they need to be insured as well. And all of that is under direct sanction. It means the Russians are going to have a very hard time.

Read moreShow less

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during their meeting in Budapest.

Reuters.

What We're Watching: Hungarian holdout, hope in Shanghai, US troops return to Somalia

Is Hungary holding the EU “hostage”?

The European Commission is pushing hard for a bloc-wide ban on Russian oil imports. But one member state — Hungary — has gone rogue and is holding up the embargo. At a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday, Lithuania’s representative accused Hungary of holding the bloc “hostage,” after PM Viktor Orbán demanded that Brussels dole out hundreds of millions of dollars to offset losses from moving away from cheap Russian fossil fuels. Orbán is buddies with Vladimir Putin and has been trying to expand Hungary’s economic relationship with the Kremlin in recent months, so he is driving a hard bargain, saying that ditching Russian oil would be an “atomic bomb” for his country’s economy. Landlocked Hungary relies on Russia for around 45% of its total oil imports, and finding alternative sources could lead to shortages and price hikes at a time when Hungarians are already grappling with sky-high inflation. Still, Brussels says Budapest is being greedy because Hungary has already been given a longer window — until the end of 2024 — to phase out Russian imports. But Orbán is hoping to get more concessions ahead of a big EU summit on May 30, when the bloc aims to find a political solution to this stalemate.

Read moreShow less

Macron celebrates his victory during a rally at the Champ de Mars in Paris.

JB Autissier/Panoramic

Macron beats Le Pen, encore

Sometimes the polls aren’t wrong. On Sunday, centrist French President Emmanuel Macron defeated far-right hopeful Marine Le Pen in a rerun of their 2017 presidential runoff.

Read moreShow less

Subscribe to our free newsletter, GZERO Daily

Latest