Both internal politics and external foreign policy are strengthening the bloc.
The pessimists of recent years had good evidence that the European project was weakening.
Brexit shattered the myth of irreversible integration, and in the same vein, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary became a vetocracy inside the bloc’s own walls. Orban’s anti-European Union legacy, which included blocking EU sanctions and obstructing aid packages, regularly complicated European Council decisions that required unanimity.
Fenja Tramsen is a program assistant at the European Policy Centre in Brussels and was the 2025 rising expert in development cooperation with Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. Her views do not reflect those of the European Policy Centre or any institution with which she is affiliated.
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