Budapest and Warsaw: Confrontation with Brussels

Abstract

The article examines the anatomy of the conflict of Hungary and Poland with the European Commission over the mechanism of budget allocation, which created another big “headache” for Brussels against the backdrop of other problems, such as post-Brexit and COVID-19. The relations between the conflicting parties have been developing in different ways at certain stages of integration and convergence. In practice, they turned out to be more complicated than the parties initially imagined when deciding on the accession of the Central European countries to the European Union. On the one hand, as the CE countries “get used” to the European system, they feel more confident and, knowing its imperfections, more often either deviate from the norms previously adopted in the EU or offer their own vision. On the other hand, the European Union still refuses to perceive these countries as absolutely equal members, does not see their regional and historical specifics and tries to adapt them to itself. This increases the latent conflict within the European Union and stimulates within it a coalition of States that support looser political integration. Taking into account the history of relations between the EU and the countries of Central Europe and the evolution of the internal political environment in the Visegrad countries, the problem is explored for the first time.