Mediaboss Marketing

Separately, The Telegraph can also disclose that protests by Extinction Rebellion at fuel depots threaten to pile even more misery on holidaymakers hoping to fly abroad this Easter.

Aviation industry leaders held crisis talks with government officials late last week after Birmingham Airport scrambled to avoid running out of aviation fuel.

Jets were asked to land at the airport with extra supplies so that they did not need to refill following the obstruction of deliveries at a nearby depot.

Airline and airport representatives are understood to have on Tuesday held fresh talks with Border Force officials amid concerns over the return of holidaymakers from their Easter break.

Border Force staff were reassigned from airports to deal with other issues such as the English Channel migrant crisis during the pandemic after most flights were grounded due to travel restrictions.

One senior industry figure said: "There were some concerns that a lot of Border Force staff had been taken out of airports and whether we would get them back again."

Long queues at airports showed no signs of abating on Tuesday as operators struggled to cope with large numbers of passengers, many of whom were going abroad for the first time in two years. More than 1,000 flights have been cancelled since the start of the Easter school holidays.

Industry leaders have pointed the finger at Whitehall. They say it is taking up to twice as long to complete security vetting procedures.

A spokesman for Airlines UK said: We are working closely and productively with all parts of Government to ensure we have the right levels of resource across the sector, including at the border. We knew things would be bumpy for the travel sector ramping up its operations from virtually nothing and are working hard to ensure things are back to normal as quickly as possible.

We are not apportioning blame to anyone, rather trying to work constructively across industry and with Ministers to resolve the problem.

A spokesman for the Home Office said: Those travelling in and out of the UK over the busy Easter period may face longer wait times than usual due a high number of passengers and as we ensure all passengers are compliant with the security and immigration measures put in place to keep us safe.

Border Forces number one priority is to maintain a secure border, and we will not compromise on this. We are mobilising additional staff to help minimise queuing times for passengers and will continue to deploy our staff flexibly to manage this demand.

Birmingham Airport insisted the fuel shortages had not led to cancellations. Andrew Holl, director of airfield operations for Birmingham Airport, said: The protests at Kingsbury depot caused minor delivery problems but our operations were largely unaffected because we sourced fuel from other depots and some incoming aircraft were asked to come with enough fuel on board for their return trips.

See the original post:
Priti Patel was warned about Easter travel chaos a month ago - The Telegraph

Amid the churn of recent headlines about inflation and the war in Ukraine, you might have missed whats happening right now on the southwest border not the ongoing border crisis, but something very much related to it. For the past few days, commercial traffic between the United States and Mexicohas ground to a halt.

On Monday, Mexican truckers blocked north and southbound lanes on the Mexico side of the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge in Pharr, Texas. They did it to protest Texas Gov. Greg Abbotts decision last week to order state troopers to inspect all northbound commercial trucks, something usually done by federal authorities. The state inspections immediately caused massive delays at ports of entry all along the border, triggeringa second protest by truckers waiting to cross into El Pasoon Monday afternoon, with trucks blocking both northbound and southbound lanes in Juarez.

This is no small thing. The volume of international traffic in question is massive. At the port of entry in Laredo, Texas, about 20,000 commercial trucks cross the border every day. Hundreds of billions of dollars in trade flow over the Texas-Mexico border every year. The entire system is a well-oiled machine. Throwing a wrench into it, even a minor one, could create a different sort of crisis at the border. But it might be worth it.

The backstory here is that Abbott issued those inspection orders last week in response to the Biden administrations plans to cancel Title 42, the public health order invoked by then-President Trump at the onset of the pandemic. For the past two years, Title 42 has enabled federal authorities to expel illegal immigrants quickly amid an historic surge in illegal immigration. Its not too much to say that Title 42 is the last remaining tool the federal government has to control record-high levels of illegal immigration.

Every other policy the Trump administration implemented to secure the border has been rescinded or neutered by Biden, and on May 23, Title 42 will be gone too. As my colleague Jordan Boyd hasexplained in some detail, the border will then be effectively open to almost anyone. Instead of arresting 150,000 or 200,000 illegal immigrants a month, federal authorities will be dealing with a half-million migrants or more each month, possiblyas many as 18,000 a day.

Those are numbers far beyond the federal governments ability to detain or even process. The only choice federal officials will have in that situation is to immediately release migrants they catch crossing illegally, or not detain them in the first place, rendering the border effectively lawless.

Whats coming, in other words, is a border surge of historic and almost unimaginable proportions, and it is happening as a direct result of Bidens policy choices. The crisis about to unfold is 100 percent avoidable, and 100 percent Bidens fault.

Abbotts response to Biden ending Title 42 was toissue a series of executive orderslast week that seemed designed to gin up headlines and media coverage rather than actually secure his states 1,200-mile border with Mexico. The order that got the most attention wasnt the inspections that have snarled commercial traffic on the international bridges but Abbotts plan to charter buses and flights to transport migrants released from federal custody to Washington, D.C. Evacuating them, as the order puts it.

Federal government wants to open the border? Fine, let those fat cats in Washington deal with the illegals! So goes the thinking, if not the rhetoric.

Abbotts busing order is quite obviously a stunt a cheap shot at Biden that makes no effective use of his considerable powers as governor of Texas. It will almost certainly not result in even one migrant showing up in Washington who was not already headed in that direction, especially given that transport to the nations capital must be voluntary.

Such stunts are to be expected with Abbott, though. I saw first-hand late last year how his sprawling Operation Lone Star, which purports to use state law enforcement to secure the border in the face of federal inaction,is almost entirely political theater. Dont get me wrong, its expensive and logistically complex, but given the narrowness of its scope and the legal constraints the Abbott administration has imposed on its application, Operation Lone Star hasnt made a dent in the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border into Texas, and it never will.

So too with this unserious busing scheme. If Abbott were serious about securing the border, he wouldnt announce a plan to transport migrants to Washington but a plan to take them back to Mexico. Inthese pages yesterday, Ken Cuccinelli argued that Abbotts busing gimmick is nothing more than window dressing that amounts to a taxpayer-funded sideshow to pay for optional vacations 2,000 miles away at a time of record gas prices instead of turning these illegal migrants around and sending them two miles back across the border.

Cuccinelli, who served as deputy secretary of Homeland Security and director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Trump administration, is among those who have rightlyarguedthat the border crisis amounts to an invasion under Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. In the face of federal inaction, he argues, states like Texas have the authority to arrest and remove illegal immigrants, securing the border entirely with state law enforcement.

Under normal circumstances, immigration enforcement of course falls entirely under federal purview. States, even border states like Texas, have a limited role in it. But these are not normal circumstances.

The relevant section of the Constitution that Cuccinelli and others point to says this: No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit delay.

Those last two phrases are what Cuccinellis argument hinges on. Indeed, theres a strong case already that Texas is being actually invaded and that the situation will not admit delay. When a half-million migrants show up on the border in June after Title 42 is gone, there will be no question that the state is being actually invaded and that the situation will not admit delay.

Theres almost no chance, however, that Abbott will ever agree with such an interpretation of the Constitution or even seriously consider taking action based on it. Too bad, because it would not only focus Bidens attention on the border but also force a reckoning over an important constitutional question: if the federal government is derelict in its duties, do states have the right to act on their own?

But Abbott could dodge that reckoning while still challenging Washington to address the border crisis. The complete shutdown of commercial traffic on the border this week presents an opportunity for Abbott, if he can seize it.

By ordering state inspections of commercial trucks coming in from Mexico, Abbott has demonstrated the leverage he could have over policymakers in Mexico in much the same way Trump did in May 2019, when he threatened a 5 percent tariff on all Mexican imports unless Mexico cracked down on illegal immigration and intercepted the large migrant caravans trekking toward the U.S. border. Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador responded immediately to avoid the ruinous tariffs, and illegal immigration quickly plummeted.

Admittedly, forcing commercialtraffic between the United States and Mexico to grind to a halt will also harm the Texas economy just as Trumps threatened 5 percent tariff on Mexican imports would have in 2019 but it will hurt Mexico worse and more quickly, which means it has a chance of working, by motivating Mexican officialdom and by forcing the Biden administration to engage.

But it will only work if Abbott comes out like Trump did and explains what hes doing and why. Given the protests and the delays at the ports of entry, which were already up to 12 hours at some crossings on Monday, Abbott should hold a press conference later this week and explain that the entire situation is entirely of Bidens making, and that all the president needs to do to reopen international trade along the U.S.-Mexico border is to reverse course on the cancellation of Title 42, which he could do with one phone call. He could also call on Lpez Obrador to put pressure on Biden to keep Title 42 in place.

Abbott has real leverage here, and he should go out of his way to ensure that everyone knows it. He could say, Because Biden will not secure this border, as governor of Texas I have a duty to protect the people of this state, so Im shutting it down. Something like that. He might even enjoy it.

If Abbott wants headlines, that will do it. It might also help secure the border.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

See the original post:
To Secure The Border, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Should Shut It Down - The Federalist

The United States has made many contributions to the world in science, technology, medicine and the arts. Weveexported the key ideasthat serve as the framework of self-government and personal freedom around the world.

By my reckoning, however, the greatest contribution of the United States to the world is the idea oflegitimate opposition. Put simply, this idea holds that people can be loyal to their nation but opposed to the sitting government. It at once legitimizes, normalizes, and institutionalizes political opposition. In too many parts of the world, this idea has yet to take root.

All over the world, billions of people live in nations where those who organize against the government are treated like traitors. The first order of business for any authoritarian nation is to arrest or kill the political opposition.

According to a 2021 report from theInternational Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance:

Democracy is at risk. Its survival is endangered by a perfect storm of threats, both from within and from a rising tide of authoritarianism. The Global State of Democracy 2021 shows that more countries than ever are suffering from democratic erosion (decline in democratic quality), including in established democracies. The number of countries undergoing democratic backsliding (a more severe and deliberate kind of democratic erosion) has never been as high as in the last decade, and includes regional geopolitical and economic powers such as Brazil, India and the United States. More than a quarter of the worlds population now live in democratically backsliding countries. Together with those living in outright non-democratic regimes, they make up more than two-thirds of the worlds population.

In the United States, it has long been considered normal that there will be a formal, organized, regularized, and institutionally recognized attempt to unseat every elected official at every scheduled opportunity. This competitive system of party politics, however flawed, sits at the foundation of our democracy. The idea of a legitimate opposition at its core is the belief that our differences on policies no matter how profound do not make us enemies.

Until very recently, politicians and parties of every stripe understood that if they lost an election, they would accept the results, dust themselves off, and try to win the next one. Sure, there might be court challenges, but until 2020, never had a major presidential candidate refused to accept the results of an election or thrown into doubt the legitimacy of an elected president (and this includes some pretty suspicious elections, 1876, 1960, 2000). Indeed, even the white men who seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy in 1860-61, never questioned the legitimacy of Abraham Lincolns election.

Many years ago, I was made to read Richard Hofstadters, The Idea of a Party System. Hofstadter charted the painful embrace of political opposition from the long-held view of something to be avoided (faction) to an essential element of democratic politics. His focus was the election of 1800,a bitterly contested battlebetween the Federalist President John Adams and his Republican opponent Thomas Jefferson. Jeffersons victory marked the first peaceful, democratic change of government in the modern era.

In 1801, in his inaugural address, Jeffersons main theme was that the strength of our democracy was in our common allegiance to the principles of self-government. Famously,Jefferson wrote, every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.

Three score years later, in 1861,Abraham Lincoln, in his First Inaugural, tried to save the Union by appealing to that same ideal, We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

And two and a half years later, in the midst of the bloody Civil War, he concluded hisGettysburg Addressby echoing Jefferson: that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Two hundred and four years after Jeffersons First Inaugural, a young state senator from Illinois delivered the Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.Barack Obama, channeling both Jefferson and Lincoln stressed the idea of the legitimate opposition. Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes, he said. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; theres the United States of America.

And very recently, asYahoo Newsreported, former Republican presidential candidateSenator Mitt Romney saida chart in his Senate office traces the history of civilizations over the past 4,000 years. From the Mongol Empire to the Roman Empire, Romney said, autocracy is the charts default setting, with authoritarian leaders at every turn. What has kept us from falling in with the same kind of authoritarian leader as Vladimir Putin are the strengths of our institutions, the rule of law, our courts, Congress, and so forth, Romney said.

In contrast to these examples of appealing to our better angels, there are among us today ordinary citizens and high-ranking leaders who are working to discredit and forcibly overturn our democracy.

In Washington, the January 6thSelect Committee has uncoveredsubstantial evidenceof illegal activity and unethical practices designed to overturn the presidential election of 2020. Starting with a campaign of disinformation over several months about election fraud and culminating with aplanned violent actionto halt the counting of Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021.A poll from February 2021found that, most Democrats say that they tend to view Republicans as political opponents. Most Republicans say that they tend to view Democrats as enemies.

A functioning democracy requires many things. It requires the tireless and hard work of the citizenry to become educated about public affairs and to hold elected and party leaders accountable. And we need to recognize that American democracy is an unfinished project. If the arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice, it is only because there are plenty of people pushing it in that direction.

Above all, democracy requires that citizens see one another as part of the same democratic project, and not as enemies. It demands that we value self-government more than a particular candidate or policy. That we accept the results of elections and, if we lose, we try to win the next one. And in the interim, we must believe that our political opponents are as loyal to the nation as we are. If fail to embrace the idea of the legitimate opposition, we will have lost our democracy.

Reprinted from History News Network with permission from the author. This column was originally published in the Minnesota Reformer.

Read more from the original source:
The loyal opposition is a key element of democracy, and we're losing it - Nevada Current

Large crowd of presidential candidate Eric Zemmours supporters Spech/Shutterstock

In Sundays first round presidential race, even though the ultimate result is to set up a repeat of the 2017 runoff between the incumbent Emmanuel Macron and the xenophobic candidate Marine Le Pen, there were two enormous surprises. The first was the utter humiliation of the two political groupings that traded turns at running the country for the past 70 years. Valrie Pcresse, the candidate of the Republican party (the establishment right), ended up with 4.7% of the vote. The Socialists, heirs to the Mitterrand legacy and the last of the dominant parties to hold the office, didnt even reach 2% (they got 1.75% of the vote), less than the communist candidate who got just over 2%.

The second surprise was the strong showing of Jean-Luc Mlenchon, a non-establishment leftist, who, it now transpires, would have overtaken Le Pen had any of the other candidates dropped out to line up behind him. Its a moral victory of sorts for voters on the left, who have now been excluded from the final round of the two most recent presidential elections. The compensation is that, with legislative elections looming in the immediate aftermath of the April 24th presidential face-off, it will inevitably lead to some kind of intriguing regrouping or redefinition.

In its reporting on the election, The New York Times focused on the one issue that is of most interest to its American readers: the impact on what it calls the Western unity US President Joe Biden has so solidly engineered in his response to Russias invasion of Ukraine. The Times foreign editor, Roger Cohen expresses the fear that, in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory France will become anti-NATO and more pro-Russia. He adds that this would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In other words, make no mistake about it, The New York Times is rooting for Macron.

Todays Weekly Devils Dictionary definition:

Opposed to the ideal the United States government imagines for Europe, defining it as a continent composed of free, enlightened democracies irremediably dependent both economically and militarily on the benevolent leadership of a powerful American Deep State and the sincere brotherly love offered by the American military-industrial complex.

The Times may have reason to worry. While the odds still favor Macron, Le Pen could possibly duplicate Donald Trumps incredible overcoming of the odds in 2016 when he won the US presidency, and largely for the same reasons. Macron has been a contested leader, branded by opponents on the left and right as the president of the rich. Hillary Clinton similarly suffered from her image of being a tool of her Wall Street donors. There comes a point in every nations life when the people seem ready to take a chance with what appears to reasonable people as a bad bet.

Perhaps that time has come for France. Its electors exercised what they call republican discipline against far-right politicians when Jacques Chirac defeated Le Pens father, Jean-Marie, in 2002. He harvested 82% of the vote to Le Pens 18%. In 2017, though Macron was still an unknown entity with no serious support from either of the major political groupings, the young man easily defeated the far-right candidate with 64% of the vote to Le Pens 36%.

Prognosticating statisticians might simply follow the curve and assume that the downward slope will lead this time to a 50-50 election. They may be right. But the reason lies less in an arithmetical trend than in the growth of a largely non-partisan populist revolt directed against what is perceived to be an occult power establishment comprised of powerful industrialists, bankers, unrepresentative parties, corrupt politicians and a political class marked by an attitude of subservience to the American empire. Macron, the former Rothschild banker, has himself tried to burnish his image as a neutral, pan-European visionary who seeks to break free from the chokehold held by the power brokers of Washington DC, Arlington, Virginia and Wall Street. His attempts to negotiate with Vladimir Putin before and after the Russian invasion were undoubtedly designed to bolster that image.

The explanation everyone likes to give for Marine Le Pens success in distancing her rivals including fellow xenophobe, Eric Zemmour is her focus on inflation. James Carville may be applauding from afar. It is, after all the economy, stupid. The issue has been there throughout Macrons term. It was the COVID lockdown and not Macrons policies that cut short the dramatic yellow vest movement that was still smoldering when the pandemic struck. The French have not forgotten their own need for economic survival while living in a society in which the rich keep getting richer. Voters remember Macrons joyous elimination of the wealth tax and the alacrity with which he announced higher gas taxes would fill the gap.

A musician I work with regularly told me recently: Im not voting in the first round, but Ill vote against Macron in the second round. In other words, of the possible rivals in the second round Le Pen (far right), Mlenchon (progressive left), some even predicted Valrie Pcresse (right) he would have voted for any one of them, just to eliminate Macron. I dont believe hes a racist, but he is now ready to be voting for a woman who has put xenophobia at the core of her political program.

If we tally up the scores of the candidates who are clearly anti-NATO without including Macron who keeps his distance but adheres to the US alliance in the current campaign against Russia the total climbs towards 60%. Historically, France is the only European country to have declared independence from NATO, when De Gaulle withdrew from NATOs military structure and banished all NATO installations from the nations territory in 1966.

Roger Cohens and The Times concern may be justified, even if Macron wins the election. Even more so if the results are close. Very few commentators, even here in France, have begun trying to tease out whats likely to emerge from Junes legislative elections. With the two traditional establishment parties on the ropes and utterly leaderless, is there any chance that a reassuringly coherent order dear to establishment politicians might reappear? Even if Macron wins, he never really managed to assemble a stable majority in his first term. The real questions now are these: among the defeated, who will talk to whom? And who will even grudgingly accept to defer to whose leadership? If Le Pen wins, it is unlikely she will be able to muster anything resembling a loyal majority. It is often said that the French voters heart is on the left, but their vote is on the right. With a president so far to the right, the voters wont deliver a presidential majority in parliament, as they have so often done in the past.

Like the US and the UK, Frances democratic institutions have become profoundly dysfunctional. In no way does the political class even attempt to implement the will of the people. The globalized economy, with its arcane networks of power, had already diminished the meaning of democracy. The US is now consciously splitting in two that same globalized economy through its campaign of sanctions against Russia, possibly as a broader strategic move designed to create a degree of chaos that will ultimately embarrass its real enemy, China.

That radical split points in one direction: militarizing even further an economy already dominated by military technology. And as we have seen, a militarized economy means an increasingly militarized society, in which surveillance, propaganda, control and enforced conformity in the name of security cancel any appeal not just to the will, but even to the needs of the people.

It is a real pity that Jean-Luc Mlenchon didnt make it to the second round, if only to enrich a largely impoverished debate. Independently of any of his political orientations concerning the economy or foreign policy, the leader of his party, La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), was already insisting in the previous election five years ago that the nation needed to replace with a 6th Republic an out-of-date 5th Republic created in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Mlenchons idea of a 6th Republic contained less presidential power and weaker parties, meaning better access for the people.

A lot of water has flowed under the Pont Neuf since 1958, and neither of the candidates appears interested in reducing presidential powers. But the result of this election demonstrates clearly that both presidential power and the ability of parties to give direction to the politics of the nation have become non-existent as tools of democratic government. The results show that they have reached a point of no return. No one should be surprised to see at some point in time after the legislative elections France being rocked by a constitutional crisis on the scale of the one Pakistan lived through this past week. At which point, a 6th Republic may emerge from the ashes, Phoenix-like, but with more than a few burnt feathers.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devils Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devils Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

For more than 10 years, Fair Observer has been free, fair and independent. No billionaire owns us, no advertisers control us. We are a reader-supported nonprofit. Unlike many other publications, we keep our content free for readers regardless of where they live or whether they can afford to pay. We have no paywalls and no ads.

In the post-truth era of fake news, echo chambers and filter bubbles, we publish a plurality of perspectives from around the world. Anyone can publish with us, but everyone goes through a rigorous editorial process. So, you get fact-checked, well-reasoned content instead of noise.

We publish 2,500+ voices from 90+ countries. We also conduct education and training programs on subjects ranging from digital media and journalism to writing and critical thinking. This doesnt come cheap. Servers, editors, trainers and web developers cost money. Please consider supporting us on a regular basis as a recurring donor or a sustaining member.

{{policy}}

{{dismiss}}

{{deny}}{{allow}}

{{deny}}{{allow}}

' + o + "

Fair Observer All rights reserved

Visit link:
Democracy and Frances Theater of the Absurd - Fair Observer

If asked to name the greatest threat facing Europe today, the continents leaders would probably point to Russias invasion of Ukraine. The war has completely upended European politics, sending millions of Ukrainian refugees into neighboring European Union countries and putting states nearest to Russia on high alert. Disagreements over further sanctions on Moscow following the Russian militarys atrocities in Bucha have begun to expose the cracks in Europes fragile unity.

But another, more insidious, threat can be found within the EUs own borders, one that it only now truly appears to be waking up to.

Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn was reelected, securing not only four more years in power but a two-thirds supermajority, thus enabling his ruling party, Fidesz, to unilaterally amend the countrys constitution. For years, he has overseen the steady destruction of his countrys democracy, transforming Hungary into what some scholars refer to as a soft or competitive autocracy, in which elections are held but the oppositions ability to compete in them is severely undermined. Orbns influence over Hungarys institutions, coupled with his control over state coffers and the airwaves, has made elections ostensibly free but far from fair. Such was the implicit verdict of a team of election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which concluded that the Hungarian contest was marred by the absence of a level playing field. Including a lack of transparency about campaign finances and pro-Fidesz bias in the Hungarian media, all of the issues that we raised this time around were raised in previous reports as well, Jill Stirk, a former Canadian ambassador leading the OSCE mission in Hungary, told me. Perhaps the most pervasive issue was the overlap between government information and campaign messaging. Whether it was on the war in Ukraine or on economic issues, Stirk said, in some instances, it was really hard to know who exactly was speaking.

For all the attention being paid to the autocratic threat from Russia, the European Union seems belatedly to be coming to the realization that autocrats among its ranks are just as great a risk. Last week the EU announced that it would, for the first time ever, apply new powers enabling it to withhold funds from countries that fail to meet the blocs democratic standardsa move that could cost Budapest tens of billions of euros.

That this decision should come amid the war in Ukraine is an encouraging sign that perhaps Europes leaders have finally recognized the importance of tackling threats to democracy both within and beyond the bloc. But by waiting so long to act, the EU has made its task that much more difficult.

Read: The EU watches as Hungary kills democracy

The question, then, is what took so long? The bloc has ostensibly long had instruments by which to keep its member states in line with its core values, though it hasnt always had the easiest time implementing them. Perhaps the most obvious example of this was in 2018, when the EU moved to suspend Hungarys voting rights within the bloc under Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty, citing a serious breach of the EUs founding values, including freedom of expression, democracy, and the rule of law. But this process requires the unanimity of all EU member states, and Poland and Hungary, which have had Article 7 proceedings triggered against them, each acted as an assured veto for the other, rendering the process effectively redundant.

But the EU isnt without leverage. Under a new mechanism, which was introduced in 2020 and approved by the European Court of Justice this year, the bloc now has the power to withhold its funding from any member state where rule-of-law violations could affect how the money is spent. Daniel Freund, a Green Party member of the European Parliament and one of the negotiators behind the so-called conditionality mechanism, told me that though it was designed to prevent abuse of the EU budget, it can in effect be used by the EU to compel member states to enact reforms and to punish those that dont. It cannot be that we send billions of taxpayer money to a country where this money is being stolen, where its being misused, where its actually used to attack the European Union and its principles, Freund said. You cant be part of a club, not play by its rules, but keep all the money. That just doesnt work.

Such funding cuts would have a huge impact on Hungary, which is one of the largest per capita recipients of EU funding, and on Orbn. The prime minister has spent more than a decade enriching himself and his cronies with European funds. As Orbn faces a costly election tab, rising inflation, and an energy crisis brought on by the war in Ukraine, he cant exactly afford to lose any fiscal support right now. Its for this reason that the prime minister wrote to Brussels last month requesting the release of the blocs pandemic-recovery funds, billions of which have been withheld from Budapest over corruption concerns.

He will attempt to lobby, blackmail, by hook or by crook, to solicit this financing from Brussels, Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a research firm and consultancy, told me. Orbn is running a kleptocracy and so these funds are pretty important to him politically and pretty important for the equilibrium that hes created around him.

Even if money is a powerful form of leverage, the threat of losing it is unlikely to have a transformative effect on Orbn, at least in the short term. In response to the EUs announcement that it would begin the process of applying the conditionality mechanism, his government urged Brussels not to punish Hungarian voters for their choice and cautioned the bloc against making the same mistakes as the Hungarian left. The Hungarian prime minister has since positioned himself as the greatest obstacle to additional European sanctions on Russia over its atrocities in Ukraine, further demonstrating the cost of the EUs inactionnot just within the bloc, but beyond it. Orbn has already been vindicated by winning another term; any attempts by the EU to reverse Hungarys democratic decline is already 10-plus years too late, Rahman said.

From the May 2022 issue: There is no liberal world order

But so long as the bloc continues to overlook, much less subsidize, autocracy within it, the whole European project is at stake. Its late, but its not too late, Freund said. This is one of the core fights of the European Union right now. In a way, [its] the fight for the soul of Europe.

Read more:
The Other Threat to Democracy in Europe - The Atlantic