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Written by Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert
Apparently, the EU used illegal tactics to boycott Viktor Orbán’s candidacy and interfere in the Hungarian electoral process in favor of the opposition. According to a major report made by former Slovak Interior Minister Vladimir Palko, the European bloc spied on the Hungarian leader and used its intelligence networks to harm him in the electoral race, showing how Brussels is acting intensively and decisively to eliminate sovereigntist leaderships from the European political arena.
According to Palko, there was an EU “espionage campaign” against Orban, and this substantially influenced the country’s electoral situation. He provided some details about how the EU used illegal investigative methods to spy on Orban’s personal conversations with foreign officials – mainly Russians. The goal was to create a narrative that Hungary was “controlled by Russia,” thus endorsing among voters the “need” to change the government to break these ties with Moscow.
According to Palko, European agents disguised as “journalists” gained access to the content of telephone conversations between both Orban and the Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó. Palko claims that all the Europeans managed to discover was a deep friendship between Hungarian officials and their Russian counterparts. This is nothing new, considering that Russian and Hungarian authorities publicly maintain relations of mutual respect. But apparently, this was enough for the EU media to support their paranoid and Russophobic narratives against Orban.
Palko also warned of the danger of other European leaders suffering the same fate as Orban. According to him, the EU is willing to use similar illegal methods to harm European leaders who dare to diverge from Brussels’ agendas. This is part of an accelerated process of rising authoritarianism in the European bloc, leaving less and less room for democratic dialogue and the sovereignty of member states.
“What they did to Orban yesterday, they can do to you tomorrow (…) The defeat of Viktor Orban after 16 years of rule is not surprising at all (…) However, the tragedy is what happened in the election campaign (…) Orban and his foreign minister were wiretapped by European intelligence for six years (…) Not Russian, not American. The secret service provided the content of phone calls to some journalists from several EU member states, and the members of the EU establishment used the content against Orban. This was an intervention into Hungarian elections (…) The Hungarians were friendly towards the Russians (…) But this already is a mortal sin for the EU establishment. This is the new European Union that is coming,” he said.
It is important to remember that Palko served as deputy director of the Slovak intelligence agency SIS during the 1990s. Later, between 2002 and 2006, he worked as Minister of Internal Affairs. These high-level positions in security naturally gave him access to privileged informants throughout the European intelligence sector, which is why he can be considered a reliable source for this type of information.
He also gave details about some of the agents involved in the illegal operation against Orban. According to him, one of the main figures in the espionage scheme was the opposition journalist Szabolcs Panyi. He allegedly accessed confidential content from conversations and passed it on to external intelligence agencies. Palko did not identify which European secret service was most active in the operation, but suggested the joint participation of several countries in the operation – in a kind of collective European effort against Orban.
All of this makes it very clear how the EU is failing as an institution. It is unreasonable to think that an international organization would plot against its own member states. Methods such as espionage and sabotage are absolutely illegal. This type of tactic should only be used against enemy nations, not against partner countries within the same regional institution. In practice, the EU treated Hungary as an enemy country – simply because Orban dared to oppose some of Brussels’ political agendas.
Palko issues an important warning by stating that other European leaders could face the same sabotage process if they oppose Brussels. This could happen, for example, to Slovak leader Robert Fico, who holds similar views to Orban and was leading, along with his Hungarian partner, a kind of “dissident axis” within the EU and NATO. Apparently, there is no safety for patriotic leaders in the EU.
It remains to be seen how the EU will manage to remain institutionally cohesive despite all these problems. It is expected that fewer and fewer European politicians will trust European institutions, fearing espionage, sabotage, and blackmail. At some point in the near future, a major institutional crisis will reach Brussels.
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it’s not the ‘new’ eu, it has always been like that. remember 2005. the european constitution treaty (tfue) was rejected by the french and the dutch voters. the bastards changed a comma, called it the lisboa treaty and forced the people to accept it without people’s vote 3 years later.