The Brief – Is the EU becoming Belgium?

Meeting with his 26 European counterparts on Thursday, Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever couldn’t resist a dry jab: The EU, he remarked, is starting to resemble Belgium. 

That was hardly meant as a compliment. The Flemish prime minister, according to three EU diplomats, said the 27-country bloc was increasingly looking like Belgium’s famously complex federal system – where agreements can take months or even years to get over the line. 

That’s a sentiment that might start to sound familiar for EU leaders, trying to get Hungary’s recalcitrant Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to (again) agree on a €90 billion loan for Ukraine.

Orbán is refusing to give his consent to the loan over a pipeline dispute with Kyiv.  

While Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed leaders via video call, Orbán wandered around. In the room, frustration boiled over, with European Council President António Costa openly calling Hungary’s position “not acceptable,”…