Eager, Pragmatic or Reluctant: Can Common Finno-Ugric Ethnic and Linguistic Links Substantiate Intra-EU CFSP Co-operation?

The paper discusses the salience of the Finno-Ugric links in substantiating intra-EU cooperation among Finland, Estonia and Hungary. The focus is on investigating evidence of such cooperation in the EU's human rights and minority rights related policies towards the Russian Federation and other eastern neighbourhood states. The paper gives an account of institutionalised forms of cultural and political co-operation among the three countries under study. It discusses whether small EU states can coalesce under constructive policy alliances or not. The paper presents the current foreign policy narratives in Finland, Hungary and Estonia and locates the Finno-Ugric narrative in this general framework.Finland, Hungary, Estonia, Finno-Ugrism, EU, ENP, CFSP

Vulnerability and economic re-orientation: rhetoric and in reality in Hungary’s “Chinese opening”

To what extent do Euroskeptic parties in Eastern and Central Europe have viable alternatives to the European Union and the broad basket of liberal policies promoted by the EU? In recent years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has used his overwhelming parliamentary majorities to chart a partially new course, and this article inventories one aspect of this new course. The article asks whether Hungary can gain any potential benefits from closer links to China as a partial replacement for resources that might not be available (or that might be lost) from its more conventional European partners to the west. Orbán has often justified both radical constitutional change and economic nationalism as powerful medicines to push back against Hungary’s vulnerability at the hands of its foreign and domestic enemies. In this context, China emerged as both a potential source of new revenue and rhetorical trope that seemed to fit in a broader Fidesz discourse of an “Eastern opening.” This article makes a first attempt to separate rhetoric and reality. It first explores how the ongoing consolidation of illiberalism in Hungary has now also sparked a geopolitical repositioning through the “Eastern opening” during Fidesz’s second term. Second, it seeks to understand the theoretical proposition that new sources of external funding—including FDI and government bond purchases—can help enable a state to execute such a broad geopolitical shift. To do so, it develops empirical material from the fascinating Hungarian efforts to position themselves as a major beneficiary of Chinese engagement with Europe. The article concludes that Orbán’s policies have indeed been broadly consistent with his party’s new rhetoric, but it also concludes that the amount of Chinese investment is, in aggregate, still modest to date. </jats:p

Reversing the Wave: The Perverse Effects of Economic Liberalism on Human Rights

This article takes the conservative shift in Polish politics under PiS as an example and argues that the failure of the liberal economy could end up reversing the fast-forward wave in human rights. And because Poland is a relatively new member of the EU, the article also develops the argument that such a reversal in the new member countries could make the European Union’s (EU) acquis irrelevant for further democratisation. Therefore, the article first explains how the failure of the economic liberalism of the neo-liberal market economy paves the way for the success of conservative political parties. It then raises the question of why political liberalism, promoted by the EU’s human rights acquis, is also a target for the opponents of the market economy. The article concludes with a discussion of current Polish politics in the aftermath of the October 2007 elections