The Europeanization of Hungarian foreign policy and the Hungarization of European foreign policy, 2010-18

ABSTRACT

Fifteen years after joining the European Union there is a growing consensus that Hungary is in a process of de-Europeanization. This article aims to evaluate this assessment by looking at the foreign policy of Hungary under the second and third Orbán government (2010–18). Were there signs for de-Europeanization in the realm of foreign policy, and if yes, which? And secondly: what has been the degree of the Europeanization of Hungarian foreign policy between 2010–18 and which factors promoted or hindered it? To answer these questions, we look at both the implementation (decisions, initiatives, voting behaviour) and the rhetoric level of Hungarian foreign policy, in the latter case building on a sample of 103 speeches of foreign-policy decision-makers. By introducing the notion of ‘inevitable Europeanization’ the paper also aims to contribute to the conceptualization of the sub-field. Overall, we find that while Europeanized only to a low degree, Hungarian foreign policy was not in a process of de-Europeanization in the analysed period. Instead, the Orbán governments aimed to ‘Hungarize’ European foreign policy, i.e. to transform it in order to make it more compatible with its own preferences.

KEYWORDS:

• Europeanization
• Hungary
• foreign policy
• Orbán Viktor
• socialization

Acknowledgments

No extra funding has been received for this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 23rd Annual Conference of the Central European Political Association (CEPSA) in Banska Bystrica in 2018, at the 13th Pan-European Conference on International Relations organized by the European International Studies Association (EISA) in Sofia in 2019 and at the conference ‘30 Jahre nach dem Systemwechsel in Ostmitteleuropa: Geht das Zeitalter der Demokratie, des Friedens und Einheit Europas zu Ende? – Diagnosen und Befunde der Demokratieforschung’ organized by the Andrássy Gyula German Speaking University in Budapest in 2019. The author would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.