Rordrigo Ballester is heading the the Center for European Studies at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest, Hungary. He holds a law degree from San Pablo University in Madrid, Spain and a Master’s degree in European Law (LL.M) from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium (2002). Together with his colleagues Damille Devenyi, Jerzy Kwaśniewski, Jarosław Lindenberg, and Zbigniew Przybyłowski, he co-authored a research paper for MCC which calls for radical reforms within the European Union. The paper turned quite a few heads in Hungarian media. Amidst all the attention and media demand, Mr Ballester graciously took the time to sit down with our site Hungarian Conservative for an exclusive interview.
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We are talking to you on the occasion of you publishing a research paper titled The Great Reset — Restoring Member State Sovereignty in the European Union. Can you give the main thesis of this paper to our readers, a brief summary, if you will?
Yes. The starting point is that the European Union is facing a deep crisis, more than ever, because it’s increasingly bureaucratic, increasingly centralized, increasingly authoritarian, and less and less competitive. So we have the impression that the original project got totally carried away. And since sooner or later you will have a reform of the treaties, our idea was to be ready to participate in this debate. How do we do that? With this report, which contains two scenarios.
The second one is more radical. It’s basically to start the Tabula Rasa scenario, so to start a new cooperation among Member States from scratch. The first scenario, on the other hand, would keep the current treaties, and the current institutions, but would do a total radical reshuffle within the institutions. And this is where we propose 23 measures, complete measures to reform the European Union in a direction which is less centralized and puts the sovereignty of Member States at the core of this new project.
Did you hear any reactions from Brussels? I know there has been quite a reaction in Hungarian media. Who did you hear from regarding this paper?
Well, in Hungarian news indeed we heard a lot of critical comments, mostly from people who see the European Union as a cult. And when you see something as a cult, then any criticism, any debate is seen as blasphemy. From Brussels so far I haven’t had any reactions.
And what made you decide that you would want to publish this research paper? Was it one specific incident within the Union or was it more a gradual process?
The triggering fact was the reform proposed by the European Parliament last year. So the procedure to amend the treaties has already started. It was started by the Parliament. It was codifying the exercise of the Conference on the Future of Europe, which was very, very poorly run, and in a very sectarian and very biased way. And so if we’re going to have, sooner or later, a reform of the treaties, we wanted already to occupy the ground with some specific proposals.
Eurosceptic forces within the EU used to go with the strategy of leaving the EU. There was the famous Brexit event, but there have been other little pushes towards that within the Union. Hungary, however, deploys a different strategy. They’re trying to reform the European Union from within. Do you believe that that’s the preferable strategy for the EU sceptics?
Well, I do think so. So it’s true that in the report we proposed two scenarios and the second one is almost tantamount to a general exit of all the Member States. The first one is indeed a reform from within, which I think makes more sense. Because there are still some things for which the European Union should be preserved, that make sense. The internal market, the free movement of people, for example. And again, my question is: why should the European Union become a liberal club? Should we allow that or not? And the solution is not to leave, but to change it from within. So yes, I agree with this approach.
What about President Donald Trump's more aggressive trade strategy towards the European Union? Do you think that that could bring about some serious changes within Brussels and within Europe as a whole?
The Trump tornado made Europe obsolete in a couple of weeks. This is, I think, really a very shocking effect. While one continent is becoming increasingly bureaucratic, increasingly woke, increasingly attached to the green deal, the other one is going the total opposite way. No wokeism, more competitiveness, more simplification, less bureaucracy, more national interest as opposed to the globalist thinking. So it's true that basically the European Union became the very old continent with Trump. And now with trade, this is a special case because it's probably the only field where the European Union can still speak on equal footing with the US—defence is another one as well. How is it going to turn out? I don't see a divorce. I just see the US as still an ally who's going to sell to us. But now they want a real partner, they just don't want a subsidized one.
They want a real partner, not one that is not able to stand on its own feet. So I see this as an opportunity, personally. Now, do we have the right leadership in the European Union to turn these circumstances into an opportunity? No, I don't think so.
And back to the internal reform efforts of Hungary. Do you see an ally to us within the Union? For example, Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia has put out a statement that he does not support any additional military or financial aid to Ukraine. Do you think that Slovakia is the strongest ally in this internal reform effort of the EU?
Slovakia is an ally, I wouldn't call it the strongest one, but Slovakia is one. Who else could it be? The paradox is that while roughly 35–40 per cent of the European voters agree with the Hungarian government’s positions, the governments within the Council of the European Union make sure that you don't have a lot of governments that will be there to side with Hungary. What may be a kind of exception is Italy.
Italy is somewhere in between two fires. It has a conservative leadership, but it also has other attachments and is also under strong financial pressure.
What about the Netherlands? There was some real optimism on the right when Geert Wilders’ party won in the fall of 2023. Do you think that administration has been a letdown or do you think there's still room for optimism in that case?
It's a coalition government of a lot of different parties that think differently. Even if the main party is the party of Geert Wilders, which is very close to the Hungarian government, I wouldn't say that I consider them a strong ally. That is for the simple reason that the positions they are taking, for example, on Ukraine—or even on some other issues such as the exclusion of Hungarian universities from the Erasmus programme—are not the positions that I would call those of an ally or even a like-minded country.
I understand that there is an ECJ court case that caught your attention lately, which you see as a testament to how woke the EU is getting. Can you talk about that, please?
Yes. On 13 March the European Court of Justice adopted a judgment whereby it forces Hungary to abide by the gender ideology. It’s a very special case, a very telling case of an Iranian refugee in Hungary who felt like a woman although he was a man, and Hungary did not want to recognize it because he hadn’t done surgery. And the European Court of Justice—through a very technical regulation, data protection—is forcing Hungary to basically recognize this person’s gender identity, whatever that means. This happened just on the date when Hungary changed its constitution in the opposite direction.
This is a very good example of how ideological the European Union—especially the European Court of Justice—is. They take a very technical regulation and they use it as a Trojan horse to impose very, very radical woke ideology.
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