Sovereignty is not a word to
be casually used, especially if in overreaching. In both the E.U. and U.S.,
state governments have overreached at the expense of the delegated competencies
or enumerated powers of the respective Unions of states. The Nullification Crisis
in the U.S. and de facto unilateral refusal of the E.U. state of Hungary to
observe E.U. law both demonstrate how the overreaching by state governments can
compromise a federal system.[1]
In the E.U. the refusal to do away with the principle of unanimity in the
European Council and the Council of the E.U. enable and even invite such
overreaches at the expense of the E.U. itself, and its distinctly federal
officials. Even a state government’s pursuit of it’s state’s economic interests
does not justify holding the E.U. hostage. The case of supporting Ukraine in
the midst of the invasion by Russia is a case in point.
In part because of Hungary’s
veto of the accession of Ukraine into the Union, as intimated by Ukrainian
President Zelensky on August 24, 2025, Ukrainian attacks on the Druzhba oil
pipeline blocked oil imports into the E.U. states of Hungary and Slovakia. “Ukraine
attacked oil facilities on Russian territory with drones and rockets.”[2]
This violation of Russia’s sovereignty was predicated on Russia’s long-standing
invasion of Ukraine’s sovereignty. Accordingly, the main motive for the
bombings of the oil facilities in Russia can be said to have been to weaken
Russia’s military by reducing the revenue to the Russian state from oil exports.
To be sure, Ukraine’s president himself “suggested that the attacks on the
pipeline might be connected to Hungary’s veto on Ukraine’s EU accession.”[3]
On the anniversary of Ukraine having broken off from the Soviet Union, Zelensky
said, “We always supported the friendship between Ukraine and Hungary. And now
the existence of the friendship depends on what Hungary’s position is.”[4]
The overt threat to continued
imports of Russian oil was received loud and clear in Budapest, the Hungarian
state capital. The state’s foreign minister, Péter Szijártó “said his
government firmly rejected what he described as the Ukrainian President’s
intimidation and considered those bombings on the Russian pipelines as an attack
on Hungary’s sovereignty.”[5]
On social media, the foreign minister puts sovereignty in terms of “territorial
integrity, and, furthermore, claims that an “attack on energy security is an
attack on sovereignty.”[6]
I beg to differ.
Sovereignty as understood
territorially and applied to the E.U. state of Hungary does not include Ukrainian
bombings within the territory of Russia because the latter is not Hungarian
territory. Furthermore, energy security is not sovereignty, especially when
such security depends on international trade. The severing of such a contract
by the inability of a counterparty to deliver product does not violate sovereignty.
In fact, as pointed out by Andriy Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, the E.U.
state of Hungary could have diversified and become independent of Russian oil “like
the rest of Europe.”[7]
Indeed, the ability to do so would have been an exercise of the governmental
sovereignty retained by the Hungarian government in the E.U., and the latter
may have used its portion of sovereignty to assist the state, given the consensus
at the E.U. level against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2014 with
Crimea.
The problem of the Hungarian
overreach on what sovereignty means and entitles helps to explain why Viktor Orbán,
the governor of Hungary, had been serially violating E.U. law and regulations
even after the Commission began withholding money for the state. Orbán’s refusal
to recognize that some governmental sovereignty, in the form of competencies—full
and shared—had been delegated to the E.U.’s federal governmental institutions
in 1993 coupled with an overreaching construal (or distortion) of what territorial
sovereignty means and entitles, explains why Hungary has stymied so much at the
federal level, given the power that states wield there through the European
Council and the Council of the European Union. Therefore, it is ironic that
Tamás Deutsch, a representative in the European Parliament representing a
district that is within the state of Hungary, “said the pipeline bombings
represent a military attack against an EU member state, and that the EU
should not conduct [accession] talks with Ukraine as a result.”[8]
So Hungary is a member-state after all, when being one is convenient.
Playing by convenience at the state
level without concern for the viability of the federal level is precisely what
could unravel the European Union. The irony is that without the E.U., Hungary
would not have an empire-scale union at hand to push back against Russia,
should Putin decide to invade Hungary after all. That would be a
violation of Hungary’s sovereignty. So resisting the urge of convenience or state-rights
ideology to exploit state power at the federal level could actually strengthen
Hungary’s sovereignty even if international trade deals do not all go
Hungary’s way. Unfortunately, the principle of unanimity at the E.U. level ultimately
undermines rather than strengthens the remaining governmental sovereignty of
the states if the veto power is exploited for expediency rather than to protect
vital, long-term state interests against federal encroachment on the
governmental sovereignty reserved by the states.
2. Sandor Zsiros, “Hungary and Slovakia in Spat with Ukraine over Bombed Druzhba Oil Pipeline,” Euronews.com, August 25, 2025, italics added.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
