Breaking the Orbán deadlock

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And there's an exhibition in the European Parliament that tells the EU's history through the

eyes of a notary. That sounds fascinating, Zoya. You can't keep me away, Ian.

I'm Zoya Shafdolovich and with me today is Senior EU Politics Editor Ian Wushart,

who's back from the slopes. Back from skiing, yeah, with a broken knee.

Broken, my god, you've upgraded this injury as the days have worn on. It's slightly hurting.

Well, I'm back in Brussels full of energy and ready to go again after not listening to the news for

a week. Well, I'm glad you're hosting an EU politics show. Yeah, you have to do all the talking

today for a change. Well, it's going to be very difficult for me. Let's get to it.

Lead story today, Ian. It's tied directly to that summit that's happening tomorrow.

The EU has made a bit of a move to try to get Viktor Oban back on board with a big

loan that's going to keep Ukraine alive through the year. Yeah, and this is something really that's

been keeping us busy ever since October, hasn't it? Because it was at the October European Council

where leaders initially thought they were going to get a deal to fund Ukraine using frozen Russian

assets. Yes, and then Belgium came along and said, absolutely not. Leaders thought they would

get over Belgium's concerns by December, the December European Council, but alas.

Alas, other countries joined Belgium, so the EU got even further away from getting the

Russian assets to Ukraine, and unfortunately had to settle for Plan B, which was this 90 billion

euro loan. So the EU thought they'd got a deal? Well, in fact, they had got a deal in December,

but then things fell apart again because Viktor Oban put a spoke in the wheel, was it last month?

He then tied this to this oil pipeline running through Ukraine. Yeah, that's right. It's the

Druzhba pipeline, which is Russian for friendship. It runs through Ukraine carrying Russian oil to

Hungary and Slovakia. And that pipeline was hit by Russian drones back in January, and the

pipeline has been offline ever since. Viktor Oban, who's got an election campaign that he's

fighting next month. And he's quite a long way behind in the polls, isn't he? Nine points behind

in the polls. Viktor Oban is using this pipeline and this spat over Russian oil to essentially

bash his opponent, Peter Magia, the leader of the teaser party. And he's claiming that Ukraine

is slow walking repairs to the pipeline and refusing to fix it basically to help his opponents

in this election campaign. And therefore said he would go back on his word and not let this

EU loan to Ukraine go through. That's right. And it is really unheard of. I cannot stress to you the

extent to which this has not happened before, where an EU leader has agreed to something at a European

Council summit and then walked back on that promise subsequently. So it's hugely controversial.

And Ukraine, amongst all this time, was saying actually there is no link between the pipeline

and anything else and actually we shouldn't have to fix this pipeline just to keep hungry happy.

That's right. And the Ukrainian argument was every time we try to fix this pipeline,

the Russians attack it again. So we're wasting time, we're wasting energy, we're wasting people's

lives by going out to try to fix it. The hint there was that it's the Russians effectively

intentionally damaging that pipeline for political gain to support their man and Budapest

Viktor Oban. That he could use it as an excuse. Exactly. And that is the claim and counter claim.

It's been a dirty election campaign in Hungary. And obviously it puts brostles in a really

difficult position. But then fast forward to yesterday afternoon and we suddenly get a statement

from the European Commission and the Council together, wasn't it? That's right. The statement

comes out saying that Ukraine has agreed to allow the EU to essentially send a mission to check

out the pipeline, see what the damage is and help fix it. And that is a huge move because

Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, he has been saying this whole time that he does not want to fix

this pipeline because effectively it's counterproductive for Ukraine. They spend money fixing a

pipeline that then helps Russia continue fighting the war against Ukraine and running this full-scale

invasion. So it was a huge kind of moment where Zelensky kind of had to admit defeat in a way

because he had to admit that if he wants to get this money to Ukraine and it desperately needs

it, he understands that he has to essentially allow this pipeline to be fixed. And you know,

the classic case is like what happened was Zelensky, he had to eat a turd so he's not limbling.

Yeah, that always throws me when you say things like that. So yeah, but why I really really

wanted to ask was everything sweetness and light now, is it? But what, 30 hours or so to go before

the European Council begins? And we don't quite know what's going to happen. I think people are

reading the tea leaves. We've got some EU officials who are talking to us saying cautiously

that they think this might be enough movement for something of a breakthrough, although even

the optimists are saying, look, it probably may not happen. Maybe, probably, maybe, maybe there

might be a breakthrough, but it may not happen before the Hungarian election. So there's this

key crunch summit tomorrow, but there's also another European Council summit next month,

which is after the Hungarian. And there's a hell of a lot on the agenda tomorrow.

There is a hell of a lot and they might not even get round to substantial talks about this.

Oh, look, I think they almost certainly will get rid of it. They'll have to because this is

the big thing. Even with an Iran crisis going on and, you know, trying to get some agreement

between the 27 and how they approach that. Yeah, but I think, look, I think two things can be true

at the same time as the EU is fond of telling us. This summit was meant to be about competitiveness,

but basically it's been hijacked by this war in Iran. And now the topic of conversation is going

to be energy prices and keeping them down. But this Ukraine stuff is going to be really a very

key topic of discussion because the EU desperately wants a breakthrough, particularly now that they

have forced Zelensky to climb down and to accept this mission. And they need something. They need

some sort of a win. Okay, so how does this give Alban an off ramp, Zoya? And how did he react to this

yesterday? Well, basically some EU officials who I've been speaking to over the past several months

have made the point that they actually thought that Alban had overstepped and felt that he had overstepped

by going back on his word at the EU Council summit. And that he's been looking for an off ramp and

looking for an opening to climb back down again because it is so unprecedented. No one's done it

before. And really he has usually stuck to his word. So there is this kind of idea that maybe he's

looking for an off ramp and maybe this might be just enough to get him to say, okay, well, I did

make this commitment. And yes, I'll green light the loan and maybe keeping the sanctions hostage

is kind of a secondary thing that he does ahead of the election. And we maybe got a little hint

of that yesterday in. Alban posted a video on social media and basically said his position hadn't

changed and that as long as the oil isn't flowing, there won't be any cash flowing to Kiev.

But we were hearing some slightly more conciliatory things from officials behind the scenes who are

familiar with Budapest's thinking. Good. Well, we mentioned then that this summit tomorrow was

supposed to be about competitiveness. It looks like that's been overtaken by events. But the

commission is coming out with a proposal on one of the big issues on competitiveness today.

This thing called a 28th regime. But actually it's a bit more political than just competitiveness

in that. Yeah. So the kind of proposal itself is pretty self-explanatory. It is about not really.

It's called the 28th regime. But it's also called EU Inc. It's about creating essentially just an EU

wide framework for startups because at the moment, if you start a company in one EU country and then

you want to expand it to others, you've got to deal with 27 different labor regimes, 27 different

tax rules. It takes forever to register in various places. There's all sorts of problems. And so

one ends up happening is these really successful little startups that get going in various places in

Europe when they start getting a bit bigger, they end up moving to California because it's easier

in Silicon Valley. And so the idea for the EU now is these companies need to be kept in Europe.

And so there's a few things that they're proposing to change that will make things easier for a

company that wants to scale up here. You can register everything fully online quickly within like

24, 48 hours, pay no more than 100 euros for it and scale up more easily. And call 28th regime

because you don't have to register in 27 different national regimes. Exactly. And it's to stop

this market fragmentation that Europe sees. We're meant to have a single market, but it isn't really

a single market. Yeah. So kind of fairly boring from a rules-based point of view, but actually

quite interesting from a political point of view because this is kind of the first test of this

idea that was sort of muted a couple of months ago, that actually if you don't want to join in

in some of these initiatives, then that's fine. We'll go ahead without you, according to Vondelaian.

Exactly. This was what Ursula Vondelaian said the EU was going to do at that Alden Beeson

summit earlier this year. She said the EU has to get moving. Things are being stuck in transit

for too long. And this is the test case. So this is the first thing that she has proposed and said

we're going to make this proposal. And if there are some countries that don't want to get on

board, because as usual, there are going to be countries that want to protect this various sacred

cars. Yes, national interest, yeah. Sacred car national interest. And Ursula Vondelaian said,

okay, that's fine. If you don't want to get on board, you don't have to. Maybe you'll join us

later. Maybe you won't. It's a coalition of the willing situation. Yeah. And it's happened before

in big things like Shangan and the euro and that kind of thing, but it's not really the way things

were done in the past. So these like these small projects, because the EU was all about one

for all and all for one. And if not everybody agreed, then all thing didn't go ahead. Yeah,

exactly. And this is, if we look back to when Emmanuel Macron declared that we need to have

a multi-speed Europe, this is a good example of it. This is exactly that. Emmanuel Macron ahead

of his time. Maybe the French were right all along again. Well, the French would say they were.

They always do. Okay, so we look forward to that proposal today. And then we see how that

then will filter through to the council and to lead a level eventually. Perhaps we'll

get discussed at the summit tomorrow, but there'll be no decisions or anything. It's too soon.

No, it's too soon for that, but we'll see what happens. It's certainly going to be an interesting

trial balloon. In, now for our last story, it's about a really cool exhibition that's opened in

the European Parliament. It's presented by the Notaries of Europe. And it basically has various

official documents from all around the EU about the most historic and important events. I've

been waiting weeks to talk about this. So yeah, thankfully the exhibition is finally open.

It is. And there are going to be some real duties on display. Firstly, you know, the US has the

Declaration of Independence. What have we got? Spain's will of Queen Isabella the Catholic from

1504. Not that. It's such a page turned out. Do you wonder if age is where I could go to see that

will? No, guess who else's will. You'll be able to see. I don't know who. Christopher Columbus's

from 1498. Nice. Yeah, and Enzo Ferraris. The sports car man. Yeah, that guy. He wrote a will.

I didn't know he was dead actually. Neither did I, but it's on display. It's also got the will

of Shropan and Victor Fugo. But I'm really excited about seeing Shropan's will because my mum's

a musician. She loves Shropan. He's her favourite composer. Okay, so perhaps she can come to Brussels

to see this European Parliament exhibition then. I'll take a for a treat. What do you know about

the notaries of Europe? Very little. They had their 30th anniversary three years ago. That's what I

found out on the website. And you're telling me we weren't invited. We weren't invited three years ago.

Unbelievable. Now the podcast is up and running perhaps we're a bit more prominent for these

invitations. I hope so because I have it on good authority that no one throws a piss up and

he's up the way a notary does. So what good authority is that? The notary who helped me get my mortgage.

All right folks, before we go, we have had so many messages, particularly with some fantastic

idioms they keep on coming in what louses run over your liver? I don't know what that means. What

language is that? It's German for if someone's grumpy or upset. Yeah, I could use that against you

every day. We also had someone who tells us that there's a Polish idiom that you might promise pairs

on a willow tree, which means promising something that's impossible. That's nice. I like that one.

Yeah, I'm going to use that too. But there's also been this is quite something. We got a text message

from someone who was responding to our call out from nightmare horror stories from their office

buildings. It was this after because this was the last one I did a couple of weeks ago when we

talked about the water being off. Yeah, but there have been development. Yeah, but now we've got

someone from DG Santi who's written in not to be left behind by the DG Comp folks. They reckon

their office is haunted. Yeah, because the lift they keep getting trapped in an elevator and

they've got no snacks and they're missing meetings. I hope they're not haunted by the

Queen is about to the Catholic from 1504. Well, I think the thing you have to do when you're being

haunted by someone is finish their unfinished business. So maybe the notary did a bad job and you

will. Who knows folks great office horror stories have been coming in. Please send us more.

Our WhatsApp number is in the show notes and we'll speak to you tomorrow.

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