The legal tools to address this internal opposition exist — Europe just needs to use them, and meet the moment with courage.
Andrew Duff is a former member of the European Parliament and is a senior fellow at the European Policy Center.Luis Garicanois a former member of the European Parliament and a professor of public policy at the London School of Economics.
U.S. President Donald Trump has undermined NATO, probably fatally. He’s treated the EU institutions with contempt and has stymied Ukraine’s efforts to assert its own sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Amid this shifting geopolitical landscape, Europe desperately needs to react, rapidly and decisively, to ensure its future security. Unfortunately, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is determined to avoid such resolute action.
Nursing a deep grudge against the EU, the Hungarian leader prides himself on disrespecting the bloc’s liberal democratic values and is cavalier about rule of law, failing to cooperate with his bloc partners. He openly opposes the EU’s external security policy and has become an apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
The EU has few options to address this crisis. And while current mechanisms have so far proven inadequate, a fresh interpretation of existing treaty provisions might just offer a solution.
Let’s be clear: Orbán’s obstructionism is nothing new, and the bloc has already been trying to work around him using ad hoc measures. The Hungarian leader is a deeply mistrusted member in the European Council, as is European Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare Olivér Várhelyi. And earlier this month, the European Council took the unprecedented step of issuing a communiqué on Ukraine signed by 26 members, not 27.
Moreover, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has begun conducting business via select groups of trusted Commissioners rather than the whole college, building coalitions of the willing by excluding the unwilling.
Still, the EU has so far been reluctant to exploit the provisions in its treaties that “as a last resort” provide for enhanced cooperation between groups of countries willing to integrate faster (Article 20, Treaty of the EU). But that last resort has now been reached, which means we can expect more policy initiatives of this type in the future.
Such development of common foreign, security and defense policies will likely be led by an avant-garde group of politically willing and militarily capable member countries. And in this area, the treaties offer more permission than prohibition.
For example, Orbán and his allies cannot prevent certain countries from integrating their armed forces (Article 42(6)), and non-EU members like Norway and the U.K. can also join the bloc’s joint arms procurement and military missions — with or without NATO.
Here, Ukraine’s membership bid presents an early test case of the bloc’s resolve to outwit internal opposition: Joining the EU must be an essential part of any Ukrainian peace deal, and by abstaining in the European Council, Orbán has already allowed accession negotiations to begin. For swift progress, however, the EU would need to drop its procedural rules from 2020, which allow members to veto the opening and closing of each chapter in the enlargement process, and return to the original treaty that only permits national vetoes at the beginning and end of the process (Article 49).
This is achievable. Unless a qualified majority in the Council calls a halt, a concerted initiative by von der Leyen, supported by European Council President António Costa and implemented by the Council of the EU presidencies of Poland and Denmark in 2025, could tear up the old rule book.
Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico would protest, of course, but their bluff must be called.
Even if all this comes to pass, though, these approaches offer only partial solutions, and they fail to address the fundamental problem: They work around Orbán rather than confronting him directly.
We already know that next year’s negotiations on reforming the EU’s system of own resources and its multi-annual financial framework will get nowhere. And those with ambitions for the bloc’s evolution will be forced to invent new financing methods outside the EU budget.
We need a much more decisive approach — and there’s where Article 7 comes in.
Article 7 permits the European Council to “determine the existence of a serious and persistent breach” of the values of Article 2, with a view to depriving the offending country of voting rights in the Council. But the deployment of this sanction requires a unanimous vote among all other members, and Orbán has always been able to rely on other fellow national populists.
Today, his main ally is Fico, and this mutual protection pact has paralyzed the EU.
However, a more creative reading of Article 7 offers a path forward. The treaty specifies that sanctions require unanimity of all other member states — but what if two countries were to face proceedings simultaneously?
The exact wording is as follows: “Acting by unanimity on a proposal by one third of the Member States or by the Commission and after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament, may determine the existence of a serious and persistent breach by a Member State of the values referred to in Article 2.” The unanimity is calculated excluding the state “in question.”
The treaty wording refers to “the Member State in question” in the singular, and doesn’t explicitly address situations where multiple countries are simultaneously under scrutiny. However, this singular language doesn’t preclude concurrent proceedings against two countries, especially when their mutual protection pact effectively renders the article toothless.
Moreover, distinguished legal scholars like Dimitry Kochenov, Laurent Pech and Kim Lane Scheppele have argued that if two countries (e.g., Hungary and Slovakia) are sanctioned in parallel, each of them is excluded from the vote on the other, thereby neutralizing their ability to veto one another’s punishment.
The rationale for this approach is a teleological interpretation of the article in question, which is intended to uphold EU values. Thus, it shouldn’t be providing a shield for autocrats via mutual impunity. And such a reading — focused on purpose and effectiveness — would support interpreting Article 7(2) flexibly, so that rule-of-law violators can’t exploit the unanimity rule to escape accountability.
It also aligns with the principle that treaty provisions shouldn’t be applied in a way that defeats their effectiveness.
The strategy carries risks, of course, as Hungary and Slovakia would likely challenge this procedure before the Court of Justice of the European Union. However, the court has consistently supported the EU’s fundamental values in recent judgments, such as in the 2021 Hungary v. European Parliament case (C-650/18).
This interpretation stays within the letter of the law, while addressing its exploitative loophole. It transforms Article 7 from a theoretical threat into a practical tool. And, crucially, it simply requires political courage — not treaty change.
Europe now faces the greatest challenge since its formation. The continent’s peace, prosperity and core values depend on confronting those who would destroy it from within, and if the bloc fails to act decisively, it risks remaining caught between a dysfunctional confederation and the “ever closer union” it hopes to become.
This proposed simultaneous suspension strategy offers a pathway forward. The legal tools to address this crisis exist — Europe just needs to use them, and meet the moment with creativity and courage.
