Viktor Orbán’s anti-woke resistance has made him the ‘splinter under the fingernail’ of the EU

By JUSTIN SPIKE
Associated Press

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s role as Europe’s perennial spoiler has frequently brought the European Union to a breaking point as he has blocked crucial decisions to leverage concessions and forced EU leaders to find workarounds. Now, frustrated officials are trying to determine what Orbán seeks to achieve. It’s conventional wisdom within the EU that Orbán’s intransigence is purely transactional: that he’s holding up key decisions to force the bloc into releasing billions in funding withheld from Hungary over breaches of rule-of-law and democracy standards. But a broader strategy of ushering in a far-right resurgence could also be motivating the illiberal leader.