French Prez slammed “foreign leaders” for “stupid” comments about riots, in an apparent swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump.
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Hungary has blocked a procedural decision needed to advance Ukraine and Moldova’s European Union accession negotiations, raising fresh questions about Budapest’s position under Prime Minister Péter Magyar, whose government had recently agreed to remove longstanding objections to Kyiv’s membership ambitions.
The intervention took place in Brussels on Tuesday, 20 October, during a meeting of the Council of the EU’s Working Party on Enlargement and Countries Negotiating Accession to the EU (COELA). Representatives of the 27 member states were examining the screening results for the final two negotiating clusters, covering environmental policy, transport, agriculture and regional development.
According to diplomats familiar with the discussions, the Hungarian delegation refused to approve the proposed procedural step. When representatives of other member states requested an explanation, Budapest reportedly maintained that its position remained unchanged, without providing further arguments.
The obstruction comes only seven days after the EU formally opened two additional negotiating clusters with Ukraine and Moldova.
On 13 October, the Council approved the opening of Cluster 2, covering the internal market, and Cluster 3, dealing with competitiveness and inclusive growth. The decision followed an agreement between Kyiv and Budapest on educational rights for Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarian minority.
Ukraine’s parliament adopted legislative amendments on 12 October extending minority-language education rights, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed the legislation the same day.
The agreement had appeared to remove the principal bilateral obstacle to further negotiations. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and his Hungarian counterpart, Anita Orbán, welcomed the development following discussions in Luxembourg.
The diplomatic rapprochement continued on 16 October, when Zelenskyy and Magyar held their first official bilateral meeting in Brussels. Both governments expressed an intention to improve relations after years of disputes under former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Magyar also invited Zelenskyy to Budapest for commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of Hungary’s 1956 anti-Soviet uprising.
The subsequent Hungarian objection has therefore interrupted a process that Ukrainian and European officials had expected to advance before the end of the year.
Ukraine and Moldova have now formally opened four of the six negotiating clusters required under the EU’s enlargement methodology.
The remaining two are Cluster 4, Green Agenda and Sustainable Connectivity, and Cluster 5, Resources, Agriculture and Cohesion. They cover several of the most economically sensitive areas of prospective Ukrainian membership.
Cluster 4 includes environmental regulation, energy policy and transport infrastructure, while Cluster 5 encompasses agriculture, food safety, fisheries and regional development funding.
Ukraine’s agricultural sector presents particular challenges for the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. The country’s extensive farmland and substantial grain production could affect agricultural subsidy allocations, market competition and the distribution of EU budgetary resources.
Poland and other agricultural member states have previously expressed concerns about the implications of Ukrainian agricultural integration. Such questions will require negotiation regardless of Hungary’s immediate position.
However, the 20 October meeting was not intended to settle these substantive issues. Its purpose was to advance the procedural preparations for formally opening negotiations on the remaining clusters.
The explanation for Budapest’s latest move may lie in Hungary’s domestic political calculations rather than a new dispute over minority rights.
Diplomatic sources have suggested that Magyar’s government is attempting to avoid accusations from Viktor Orbán’s opposition that it is making excessive concessions to Ukraine.
Although Magyar defeated Orbán in April’s parliamentary elections and has adopted a more cooperative approach towards Brussels, he has consistently opposed accelerated Ukrainian membership.
In an interview conducted on 20 October, Magyar reiterated his opposition to fast-tracking accession, arguing that membership must remain conditional on compliance with EU requirements. He also questioned whether a country at war could join the Union.
Another potential complication concerns Hungary’s financial relationship with Brussels.
The European Commission agreed in May to unlock €16.4 billion in previously frozen funds following reforms introduced by Magyar’s administration. Some disbursements remain subject to conditions, while separate disputes over EU financial penalties continue.
However, there is currently no publicly established evidence that Hungary’s objection on 20 October was intended to secure additional financial concessions. Any connection between the two negotiations remains speculative.
Hungary’s position also affects Moldova, despite the absence of an equivalent bilateral dispute between Budapest and Chișinău.
The EU has kept the accession negotiations of Ukraine and Moldova politically aligned, seeking to advance both countries through the six negotiating clusters together.
Consequently, an objection directed principally at Ukraine can delay Moldova’s progress even when its own technical preparations satisfy the relevant requirements.
Separating the two accession tracks would allow Moldova to advance independently, but such a move would require political agreement among member states and could raise further questions about the EU’s enlargement strategy.
Ireland, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU until 31 December, has made progress on Ukrainian and Moldovan accession a priority.
The disputed procedural decision is expected to return to subsequent meetings of the enlargement working party, with senior EU and national officials still anticipating that the final two clusters could formally open in December.
The latest obstruction does not reverse the four clusters already opened, nor does it terminate accession negotiations. It does, however, demonstrate that the change of government in Budapest has not eliminated Hungary’s capacity or willingness to obstruct individual stages of enlargement.
For Kyiv and Chișinău, the immediate question is whether the 20 October decision represents a short-lived domestic political manoeuvre or the beginning of another prolonged dispute over the conditions of EU membership.
On Tuesday, the Alhambra Monument in Granada began hosting the digital exhibition “The Dream of a Renaissance Princess: Mary of Hungary,” which runs until November 20th.
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The exhibition honors one of the most influential women in 16th-century Europe, exploring the historical and cultural ties between Spain and Belgium through the life of Mary of Hungary, sister of Emperor Charles V and governor of the Netherlands from 1531 to 1555.
The exhibition uses virtual reconstructions and audiovisual resources to showcase the “artistic splendor” of Mary of Hungary’s court, renowned for her political and diplomatic role and her cultural patronage during the Renaissance.
Alhambra Trust Director Rodrigo Ruiz-Jimenez presented the exhibition as part of an international project to recover lost historical heritage. One of the main attractions is the digital recreation of the now-vanished palace of Binche, which Mary of Hungary transformed into a prominent center of cultural and artistic activity.
✳️ La @alhambracultura redescubre el legado de María de Hungría, una de las grandes mujeres del Renacimiento europeo.
— Cultura Junta de Andalucía (@CulturaAND) October 20, 2026
🎦 Una exposición audiovisual recupera el esplendor de la corte de la hermana de Carlos V y los vínculos entre España y Bélgica.
ℹ️🔗 https://t.co/vdoyvJMw8x pic.twitter.com/PDPBGPuQI9
The text reads, “The Alhambra Monument rediscovers the legacy of Mary of Hungary, one of the great women of the European Renaissance. An audiovisual exhibition recovers the splendor of the court of the sister of Charles V and the ties between Spain and Belgium.”
The organizers emphasize that the Binche Palace played a symbolic role similar to the Palace of Charles V in Granada, both conceived as expressions of the power and prestige of the Habsburg dynasty.
The experience invites visitors to tour different palace rooms virtually, learn about the Renaissance court life, and explore music and celebrations characteristic of the period.
The itinerary also includes content dedicated to the Mariemont hunting lodge and the performance of the motet Sancta Maria, a composition created in 1548 in honor of Mary of Hungary. The exhibition is part of the European project MARY4ALL and involves institutions from Spain, Belgium, and France.
#Spain | Madrid's public school teachers have launched an indefinite strike, demanding smaller classes, reduced teaching hours, and increased education funding.
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) October 19, 2026
Thousands marched under the “Marea Verde” banner, calling for negotiations with regional authorities.#TeachersStrike… pic.twitter.com/L9nYBiDnGs
teleSUR: JP
Source: EFE
Over coffee, an Israeli woman I know began to cry. “I’m 42,” she said, “and I’ve spent my entire adult life held captive by Bibi.”
Benjamin Netanyahu has not been Israel’s prime minister for every one of those years. Yet even out of office, Israeli politics rarely escaped his gravitational pull.
For him or against him, public life kept arranging itself around his presence.
Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having previously held office from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to 2021, and from 2022 onward.
Hungarians know something about that feeling. For 16 years, Viktor Orbán was not merely Hungary’s prime minister but the organising fact of Hungarian politics. Institutions bent around him, opponents defined themselves against him, and arguments somehow ended up being about him.
On 12 April, that era ended.
Péter Magyar’s insurgent Tisza party defeated Fidesz after 16 uninterrupted years in power. The final results gave Tisza 141 of parliament’s 199 seats, a two-thirds majority.
The temptation is to tell a simple story of liberation: the dominant leader fell, the spell broke, democracy returned. But political systems leave habits behind, and Orbán’s most durable legacy may prove to be the way Hungarians learned to imagine politics itself.
That is also Magyar’s dilemma.
Opposition movements confronting personalised systems often conclude that they, too, need a protagonist capable of gathering diffuse grievances into a political force.
Yet the qualities that help an insurgency win are not necessarily those needed to build a pluralist order afterwards. Campaigns reward concentration, and democracy depends on dispersing authority.
A challenger may have to become indispensable in order to win. Governing democratically requires eventually proving that he is not.
For people my age, Orbán’s rise was a rupture because we remember other governments and possibilities. Many of my students, now in their 20s, do not. Their political adulthood unfolded almost entirely under Fidesz. Orbán was simply there, as unavoidable as the weather.
Power can come to look distant and durable, participation noble but futile, and institutions captured or irrelevant. Politics becomes something done to you rather than something you do.
I know how deeply that can lodge itself in the mind. For five years, I have had countless conversations with Orbán in which I argued with him and tried to persuade him to change course. All of them took place in my dreams.
Supporters and opponents experienced Orbán’s system differently, but both learned to orient themselves around the same centre of gravity. Loyalists read its signals, while critics watched it constantly and defined themselves against it.
Parties that spend years confronting a dominant machine tend to centralise themselves. Message discipline becomes existential, disagreement can look like sabotage, and restraint like something to discuss after victory.
That is why Hungary’s challenge is larger than reversing Orbán’s policies.
A government elected to repair democratic institutions has to accept restraints precisely when it can most easily avoid them: strengthening parliament even when it dominates it, protecting independent media when they attack the government, and creating institutions whose authority does not depend on proximity to the prime minister.
Older Hungarians understandably speak about restoration: rebuilding institutions, restoring judicial independence, returning to democratic normality.
But “return” means something different when you are 25. You cannot return to a political world you never inhabited. For younger Hungarians, democracy cannot merely be recovered; it has to become real for the first time.
That distinction matters beyond Hungary. Opponents of personalised populism often offer restoration as their programme.
Yet generations raised amid democratic erosion may have little memory of the normality they are being asked to recover. Democratic politics has to show that dispersed power need not mean ineffective government, that disagreement need not threaten the state, and that losing an election need not mean losing the country.
Success should also mean making politics less consuming. Most democratic life is not election night but local meetings, newspapers and arguments about schools, budgets and public space.
A healthy political order allows citizens to pay less attention to the leader because fewer things depend on what that leader wants. Personalised rule teaches the opposite lesson. Even resistance can become dependence.
This is where Hungary’s experience returns me to my conversation about Israel.
Israelis are due to vote on 27 October in an election in which Netanyahu once again occupies much of the political landscape.
Whatever voters decide, Hungary suggests a question that will remain whenever his long political era eventually ends: can political life be reorganised around institutions and competing interests rather than around the presence, or absence, of one man?
Removing a dominant political figure does not remove the habits formed around him. Supporters have to imagine their politics without the leader they regarded as indispensable, while opponents have to decide what they stand for when opposition to him is no longer enough to bind them together.
Hungary’s experience suggests that this is where democratic renewal really begins – not with replacing one dominant figure with another, but with building institutions and political movements that no longer require one.
My friend’s tears were for the time she felt had been taken from her. Hungary’s younger generation, now free of Orbán, cannot mourn in quite the same way, because many have no memory of political adulthood against which to measure what was lost.
Their challenge, now, is not to recover an old normal but to create something they have never experienced: a public life in which politics belongs to citizens without consuming them, and in which no leader becomes so indispensable that an entire country must organise itself around him.
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