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Hungary has vowed to veto the European Union bailout package due to the coronavirus epidemic and the budget for the next seven years if the allocation of funds is conditional on the rule of law. At first it was still accepted, and then months later the whole process was stopped. In France, the government of President Emmanuel Macron had to be completely transformed. The Fiat Chrylser and Peugeot-Citroen groups decided to merge with one of the biggest changes in the automotive industry. “More Lake Balaton, less Adriatic, that should be the password now,” the prime minister said. Meanwhile, in another region of the Mediterranean, the Turkish and Greek navies lined up with each other. It wasn’t boring in July 2020.
By mid-summer, the spread of the coronavirus epidemic will slow down significantly in Hungary: only 2-30 daily infection data has been received, allowing most people to spend their summer holidays in peace. In turn, the government has introduced color-coded markings that indicate to which country it is possible to travel or return. The goal was not to bring the disease from abroad. However, the favorite holiday destinations of the Hungarians, Croatia, for example, received neither yellow nor green plecsnit, while the other countries of the union ranked these places one by one.
“More Lake Balaton, less Adriatic,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in a radio interview, suggesting that it is now less risky to travel abroad. Willingness to travel domestically also increased, but it also turned out that the travel plans of 41 percent of Hungarians were influenced by the introduction of entry restrictions for countries of different classifications. Due to the crisis, 37 percent of Hungarians did not even plan a vacation for 2020. Then, as the summer passed, it turned out that vacations in Croatia were not canceled by the masses, including our politicians, so Viktor Orbán was on the spot. side, just as Chancellor Péter Szijjártó’s sailing became a topic of debate in August.
Yet throughout July, the coronavirus epidemic seemed to resolve at home for months, with one country enjoying open-air pubs and specifically rainless summer months.
The new front in the EU struggle has arrived
On July 10, Fidesz-KDNP published a motion for a resolution launching a new war between Brussels (and the other member states) and Hungary: the Hungarian government, which was trying to negotiate, vetoed the non-closure of the “weekly article” in progress. “Before allocating the budget and the recovery fund, whether political NGOs can be supported with EU funds and whether all distribution is linked to the rule of law mechanism. This Hungarian statement, which was later adopted by the representation of Almost two-thirds of Fidesz-KDNP codified that there would be a debate in the EU that would last for months.Hungary found only one ally, Poland, who lined up behind the plan.
But on July 21, for the first time, it seemed that they could close this debate: after a marathon debate, EU leaders managed to agree on the next seven-year EU budget and a recovery fund to mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus. The final text of the document on the rule of law includes the fact that the European Council “emphasizes the importance of respect for the rule of law”. Viktor Orbán explained this as a success, because it was not mentioned in the text that it would be a criterion for the allocation of 1.8 billion euros, but the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who insisted on this condition, clearly said that it is not a loophole, democracy matters. The debate thus came to a halt, at least during the summer.
Next door, there was a government crisis because of the fans that came to us
On July 1, the month in Slovenia immediately began with a government crisis: it wasn’t until March of this year that the right wing Janez Jansa took power in Slovenia, but right in the middle of a coronavirus epidemic, few would have liked it. . Mainly that days later they had to decide things like where to get new fans for the country, where the first wave was harder than in Hungary due to the proximity of Italians and the large number of travelers. In the end, a completely unknown company called Geneplanet was selected, from which the equipment was bought for an average of half that in Hungary, but locally, experts said it was too expensive. It later turned out that various members of Jansa’s government were able to control the hiring, pressuring the company to obtain funds from them even though they submitted the most expensive offer.
In July, the prosecution had also joined in: house searches had been ordered in dozens of places, the country’s economy minister had been questioned, and the interior minister and the head of the National Police had resigned. However, the agreement was not concluded because Geneplanet canceled the contract: the Hungarian government bought the machines from them at a higher price than the original, the basic specification of which is not suitable for the treatment of coronavirus patients.
Macron was forced to change
Emmanuel Macron’s party, the centrist La République en Marche (LREM, The Republic in Momentum), was heavily defeated in French municipal elections in late June, underscoring its fragility. LREM failed to win over any of its main allies to power, it swept the will of the electorate everywhere. The president had already planned to reshape the government after the defeat, but did not want to remove the more popular Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who in turn did him a favor and submitted his resignation from the government on July 3 without prior consultation.
It didn’t take long to nominate Macron’s new government: On July 6, Jean Castex became the new prime minister, who eventually retained many old faces, with 22 of his 31-member cabinet already ministers in the previous government. However, the person who will be the current president’s greatest challenger has appeared, as Gérald Darmanin, 37, has become the youngest Interior Minister in the modern history of France, Darmain himself is a political explorer of the former chief of State Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012). joined Macron’s camp in.
A new automotive giant has emerged
As early as June 26, the Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot-Citroen groups announced that they would merge, creating the world’s fourth-biggest automotive concern. The announcement at the time was just a letter of intent, many details of which have yet to be revealed: Despite the difficulties posed by the virus epidemic, they were destined to be successful in the future.
Then, on July 15, the shareholders’ prospectus was also issued, which revealed that Carlos Tavares will be the general director of the merged company, and by 2021 the merger may be completed.
The Turks and Greeks torpedoed their warships
After a series of seemingly fringe debates, the Turkish-Greek relationship, which has been essentially unresolved since the split in Cyprus, has become strained again. This time, Greece became suspicious of the Turks of a series of intrusions in the Greek waters around Crete. Ankara has been accused of trying to shape a right to extract undersea hydrocarbon reserves.
The conflict also had a strange aftertaste because two NATO members clashed so much that the navies of both countries lined up in the Mediterranean. International reconciliations did not appear effective even in the July debate, although Greece also sent a formal protest to the UN, the leaders of the military alliance, the EU and Turkey on July 21. And everyone wanted to avoid having to deal with a geopolitical problem in the midst of a coronavirus epidemic.
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