The European Commission has announced a Fertiliser Action Plan that it says will support farmers facing higher costs and shortages, strengthen EU production and cut reliance on imports.
The event is set to be historic. For the first time, Sweden, the most recent country to join NATO, in March 2024, will host the Alliance's foreign ministers in Helsingborg, in the south of the country, on May 21 and 22, to prepare for the Ankara summit scheduled for early July in Turkey. The meeting will provide an opportunity for Stockholm to demonstrate just how seriously the Scandinavian kingdom is taking its NATO integration, both in terms of cooperation with its allies and strengthening its defense capabilities.
The announcement made on Tuesday, May 19, offered a clear example. During a press conference, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson revealed that his country would buy four defense and intervention frigates from France, presenting the deal as "one of the largest Swedish defense investments since the Gripen fighter jet was introduced in the 1980s." Valued at 40 billion kronor (€3.7 billion), the order will allow Sweden to triple its air defense capabilities.
According to Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson, the choice of the French shipbuilder Naval Group was primarily motivated by its ability to provide "quick delivery" and a "proven system". He also acknowledged that the purchase would "forge closer ties with France over the long term and [open] the way to developing collaborations in many areas." On X, French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed "a major strategic decision, reflecting the mutual trust between [the] two countries."
The contract is part of the roadmap signed during the Paris Air Show at the northern Paris suburb of Le Bourget on June 18, 2025, between Jonson and France's then defense minister Sébastien Lecornu, "aimed at strengthening the two countries' cooperation in armaments." In addition to "a program of next-generation surface vessels," the agreement also covered aerial surveillance and several types of missiles: anti-tank, long-range air-to-air, and medium- and short-range air defense.
Following the agreement, at the end of 2025, was a French order for two GlobalEye surveillance aircraft produced by the Swedish giant Saab for 12.3 billion kronor (€1.1 billion) and reciprocal purchases of anti-tank missiles from the French-Italian-British group MBDA and Saab. On April 14, France's defense procurement agency, the DGA, ordered eight Varda systems (advanced airborne detection vehicles), featuring Saab's Giraffe 1X radar integrated on a vehicle by Swedish manufacturer Scania.
Another sign of closer ties was Sweden's decision in October 2024 to join the initiative, launched by France, Germany, Italy and Poland in July 2024, with the aim of developing a European solution for the production of long-range strike missiles (over 300 kilometers).
Until these contracts, Sweden – the world's thirteenth largest arms exporter (and one of the highest per capita) – remained a modest export market for French arms manufacturers. According to a report submitted to parliament in September 2025, Stockholm ordered €104 million worth of weapons in 2024, up from €73 million in 2023, making it France's eighth-largest European customer.
The growing closeness between the two countries was also evident in the field, with the French military's increasing participation in training exercises in Sweden. Patrolling the Baltic Sea, French vessels made more than 30 port calls in the kingdom's harbors in 2024 and 2025. The Swedes particularly appreciated the Charles-de-Gaulle aircraft carrier's visit to Malmö at the end of February: many ministers took the opportunity to visit, accompanied by Thierry Carlier, who, before being named France's ambassador to Stockholm in March 2025, was deputy director of the Direction Générale de l'Armement. In addition, the two countries began discussions in early March on the principle of "advanced nuclear deterrence," a concept proposed earlier in the year by Emmanuel Macron.
For Naval Group, the Swedish contract is a welcome development after three major export setbacks. In November 2025, the French shipbuilder lost out to Saab for the Polish submarine program. In August 2025, in addition to being eliminated from the Canadian submarine competition, it was beaten by Britain's BAE for a frigate contract in Norway. Naval Group is still vying for a frigate contract in Denmark.
The Stockholm order ensures activity for the next three years at the shipyard in Lorient, Brittany, whose production capacity had been increased to two frigates a year in anticipation of the many expected export tenders. In addition to France, which has ordered five ships (two of which have already been launched), Greece is the only foreign customer for Naval Group's frigates, under a 2022 contract for three ships, supplemented by an additional vessel in November 2025. The first defense and intervention frigate was delivered to the Greek navy on December 18, 2025.
One of Peter Magyar's main campaign promises was that if they won the election, they would limit the prime minister's mandate to two terms in the Constitution, and this amendment would also apply retroactively to Viktor Orban. They kept the promise; this is included in the Tisza Party's first proposal for an amendment to the Constitution, which was introduced by two members of parliament from the parliamentary group, Marton Mellethei-Barna and Istvan Hantosi, who leads the Committee on Justice and Constitutional Affairs.
The legislation currently in force states that the prime minister is elected by the National Assembly upon the proposal of the President of the Republic. This would now be supplemented with the following paragraph: "A person who has already held the office of prime minister for a total of at least eight years, including interruptions, may not be elected prime minister. When calculating this eight-year period, the prime ministerial mandate fulfilled on or after May 2, 1990, must be taken into account."
And later, the proposal also states that the mandate of the prime minister terminates "if they have held the prime ministerial mandate for a total of at least eight years."
Until now, the prime minister's mandate has not been limited in any form, and Viktor Orban has led Hungary for a total of five terms since 1998.
With another point of the proposal, they would create the constitutional basis for dissolving the Sovereignty Protection Office established in 2023. Fidesz had previously written into the Constitution that "it is the duty of all organs of the state to protect Hungary's constitutional identity and Christian culture," and that the protection of the country's constitutional identity is carried out by an independent body established by a cardinal law. The Tisza Party would now quite simply repeal this section, and after the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution, only the 2023 law on the Sovereignty Protection Office would need to be abolished.
The third point of the proposal package affects public interest asset management foundations performing public duties (kekva). In 2020, the Fidesz majority in parliament wrote into the Constitution that "a cardinal law shall provide for the establishment, operation, and dissolution of a public interest asset management foundation performing public duties, as well as the performance of its public duties." Based on this, the law was subsequently passed, outsourcing the maintenance of a large part of Hungarian higher education and other state-owned institutions to foundations. Twenty-one domestic universities and the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), built up during the Orban government, also operate under such foundation management.
The Tisza proposal would state that the assets of a public interest asset management foundation performing public duties are national assets. According to the proposal, the founder's rights of the foundations would be exercised by the government, and the government could even terminate them. "The state is the universal legal successor of a dissolved public interest asset management foundation performing public duties."
According to the justification, the outsourcing of public assets and founder's rights "was the result of an abuse of legislative power." According to the proponents, the amendment "makes it clear that although public interest asset management foundations performing public duties are private law entities, their assets are national assets," and in order to establish democratic control over the foundation bodies, it is also established that the founder's rights are exercised by the government instead of the foundation's board of trustees.
"The government, acting on behalf of the state, may decide at any time to dissolve a public interest asset management foundation performing public duties. Legal certainty and the protection of creditors' interests require it to be established at the level of the Constitution that the Hungarian state is the universal legal successor of a public interest asset management foundation performing public duties that has been dissolved in this way," the justification states.
The National Assembly is scheduled to meet next week, and they could begin debating the bills submitted on Wednesday as early as then. The Constitution can be amended by a two-thirds majority of the National Assembly, and it will enter into force on the day following its promulgation.
The current proposal is the sixteenth amendment to the Constitution adopted in 2011. At his press conference last week, Peter Magyar spoke about how the Constitution will soon be amended on several points, and later they will begin a comprehensive, multi-year constitution-making process, with the new constitution ultimately being confirmed by a referendum. The Fidesz two-thirds majority in parliament voted for the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution in April last year.
At that time, text was added stating that a human being is either a man or a woman, the use and distribution of drugs is prohibited, and the protection of children takes precedence even over the right to free assembly. The amendment made it possible to suspend people's Hungarian citizenship, and for the police to ban Pride.
“I was able to visit 700 towns and villages—it wasn’t easy,” Péter Magyar told Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the members of Tusk's government seated with them during his visit to Poland. A video of the Hungarian Prime Minister shows that Tusk smiled and then said to his cabinet members seated nearby:
>“Did you write that down? 700 settlements, not five big cities, but 700 settlements!”
The second stop for Péter Magyar and six ministers of his government on their visit to Poland was Warsaw. The Prime Minister began the day by laying a wreath, after which they went to the Polish Prime Minister’s residence, where members of the Polish government held talks with their Hungarian counterparts, while Péter Magyar held a one-on-one meeting with Donald Tusk.
Following consultations and an informal breakfast, Magyar and Tusk held a joint press conference. The Hungarian Prime Minister remarked that it was no coincidence that he had chosen Poland for his first official visit as prime minister, noting that the heart of Europe beats in Central Europe today. He expressed hope that the V4 countries can hold a meeting in Budapest at the end of June. Tusk, for his part, said that Hungarian-Polish relations have traditionally been good, even if there was a brief interruption in this in recent years. In his view, Viktor Orbán being in power was not only a problem for Hungary but also caused a dramatic deterioration in Polish-Hungarian relations.
Photos and videos posted on social media reveal that the Polish PM gave Péter Magyar a red-white-green heart-shaped pin, evoking the symbol of his coalition's 2023 campaign—the pink heart. “Here is the special Hungarian edition for you. You must have a heart and believe in your nation,” Donald Tusk told Magyar, according to the video he shared.
“Note: Orbán and Sikorski at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski wrote next to a photo of himself with Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orbán. Sikorski’s comment was presumably also a reference to Viktor Orbán, whom he has sharply criticized on several occasions, once even saying that Orbán deserved the Order of Lenin. The Polish foreign minister wrote that he had started the day off right – "with a conversation about a shared European future and Polish-Hungarian cooperation with Anita Orbán." The Hungarian Foreign Minister, for her part, commented that she is “looking forward to our future discussions in order to strengthen Hungarian–Polish cooperation based on mutual respect, partnership, and our shared European future.”
Minister of Transport and Investment Dávid Vitézy held talks with Dariusz Klimczak, the Polish Minister responsible for infrastructure. In commenting on their meeting, Vitézy wrotethat from now on, they will lobby together in Brussels to ensure that as much EU funding as possible goes toward developing the railways in Central and Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, István Kapitány, Minister of Economy and Energy, reported on having had constructive talks with Minister Andrzej Domański on opportunities for Hungarian-Polish economic cooperation.
“It was an honor to hold bilateral talks with Poland’s Minister of Culture, Marta Cienkowska. During the meeting, we discussed the traditionally close Hungarian-Polish friendship and placed particular emphasis on strengthening cultural ties between the two nations in the future,” wrote Zoltán Tarr, Minister for Social Relations and Culture, in a statement about his meeting.
Several left-wing candidates in France were allegedly targeted by a “private company based in Israel.”
The Global Sumud Flotilla set sail from Turkey last week in the latest attempt by activists to breach Israel's blockade of the Palestinian territory.
Earlier this week, German Green MP Konstantin von Notz, deputy chief of the intelligence oversight committee, warned of a growing threat from China.
The head of the European aerospace company Airbus said he still believes in the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) as a platform, even as he doubles down on developing separate fighter jets.
The struggling €100 billion programme to develop an aerial combat system centred on a next-generation fighter jet has been stuck for over a year due to industry and political differences between France and Germany.
“Collaboration is not a walk in the park,” Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury admitted during the opening remarks of his company’s defence summit on Wednesday.
However, Faury stressed that he continues to believe in a European future combat air system, which is more than just a plane. He pointed out that most of the current difficulties lie in the fighter jet component of the project.
Airbus has previously suggested separating the fighter-jet component of the overarching aerial combat system, which would allow Germany and France to develop their own jets. Faury also compared the potential FCAS fighter jet to the American F-35, which is essentially three different planes.
According to the CEO, the so-called combat cloud, that connects different military platforms from planes and helicopters to drones, is something that “we need to continue anyway”.
The joint project between France, Germany and Spain is currently on the brink of failure because two lead contractors – Dassault Aviation for France and Airbus Defence and Space for Germany – are having difficulty working together.
Meanwhile, Germany and France’s ideas of what the future fighter jet will look like are increasingly diverging. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently pointed out that his country has different needs from France, which would like to use the fighter jet for its nuclear programme and aircraft carrier.
What’s more, the Airbus boss explained that this program was started before the war against Ukraine broke out, “under a number of assumptions which are no longer valid today”.
It is now up to the governments to decide the fighter jet’s future.
Following several attempts to find a solution, the leaders of Germany and France once more tasked their respective defence ministers with finding one at the end of April.
Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen called for completing the European single market by cutting red tape, boosting the digital transition, and maintaining social inclusion. But she also warned that success still requires constant political will.
A "mini" sanction package is set to be discussed by EU ambassadors this week, targeting around ten individuals who were previously protected by Viktor Orbán's government and a handful of Russian vessels.
A former Polish deputy government minister wanted on charges of misusing public funds may have left Hungary via Serbia, Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said in an interview with private broadcaster TVN24 shown late on Tuesday.
If Podgorica negotiates a document that combines full membership with stronger accountability and safeguard mechanisms, "this could very well become the template for future enlargements" – not only for the Western Balkans, but potentially also for Ukraine and Moldova, explain BiEPAG members Jovana Marović and Odeta Barbullushi
Top officials used the G7 gathering in Paris to warn Scott Bessent of the economic consequences of the war in Iran.
Soldiers of the “Black Jack” brigade ritually furled and packed their unit’s colours in Fort Hood, Texas in early May, as the tank unit’s 4,000 troops prepared to deploy to Poland. Their mission was to help defendNATO against the Russian threat. “When an armoured brigade combat team deploys forward, it sends a clear and unmistakable signal,” said General Thomas Feltey, the division’s commander, at the ceremony. Less than two weeks later America sent the opposite signal: the deployment was scrapped. It was the second time this month that Donald Trump had announced cuts to America’s military presence in Europe. Earlier he said he would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany and more from elsewhere, reflecting his anger at the lack of European support for his war in Iran.
Mr Trump has been casting doubt on his commitment toNATO and its Article 5 mutual-defence clause since the start of his second term. That has prompted a long-overdue increase in European defence spending. Yet in recent months he has gone further, announcing unexpected troop reductions and cancelling the deployment to Germany of a cruise-missile unit that was to plug an important gap in Europe’s defence. The rapid drawdown has upended Europeans’ assumption that they would have time to build up their own forces and replace vital American “enablers”, such as intelligence and surveillance assets. America’s huge expenditure of missiles in Iran is delaying shipments to European allies and Ukraine, as it restocks its own supplies.
Some inNATO, shocked by Mr Trump’s threat in January to seize Greenland from Denmark, worry not only that America might sit out a war with Russia, but that it could actively thwart other members’ responses. The possibility is seen as remote. But interviews with senior officers and defence officials from severalNATO countries reveal for the first time how seriously they take the risk. Some European armed forces are making secret plans to fight not just without America’s help, but without much ofNATO’s command-and-control infrastructure. “The Greenland crisis was a wake-up call,” says a Swedish defence official. “We realised we need a Plan B.”
None of the officials interviewed would speak on the record, because of concerns that doing so could accelerate America’s departure. Mark Rutte,NATO’s secretary-general, “has literally banned talking about it because he believes it can add fuel to the fire”, says one insider. When Matti Pesu of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) co-authored a paper last year arguing for a Plan B, Finnish officials denied one would be considered. But the urgency of the threat has led several countries to start thinking about how, and under whose command, Europe would fight ifNATO were to “malfunction”, as one official put it. “What chain of command can you use if America is blockingNATO?” asks another defence official.
The question cuts to the core of the alliance’s success. Most military coalitions look like a primary-school music practice: each country turns up, bangs its drum roughly in time with the others, and leaves.NATO, by contrast, was set up as a symphony orchestra controlled by a single conductor, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), an American general who also commands America’s forces in Europe. To conduct this orchestra,SACEUR has secure communications links to a network of permanent subordinate headquarters (see map), staffed with thousands of personnel ready to respond the moment a war starts. “US leadership is the glue that holds the alliance together,” says Luis Simón, the director of the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Free University of Brussels. “Without them, we would see a fragmentation, probably, of the deterrence ecosystem.”
Thus a Plan B requires more than acquiring weapons; it means creating a structure under which Europeans would fight. The core, at least in northern Europe, would probably be a coalition of Baltic and Nordic countries, plus Poland. These countries mostly share common values, and all fear Russia. Several ofNATO’s bigger European members, such as Britain, France and Germany, have “tripwire” forces in the Baltics, and are thus very likely to be drawn into any conflict. Perhaps one-third ofNATO members would “fight on day one” irrespective of whether Article 5 is triggered, says Edward Arnold ofRUSI, a think-tank in London. “No-one would be waiting for the Portuguese to turn up at the North Atlantic Council [NATO’s highest decision-making body] to debate,” he says.
One often-mentioned alternative command structure is a British-led coalition of ten mostly Baltic and Nordic countries known as the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), with a standing headquarters near London. Established by Britain and six otherNATOmembers in 2014, theJEF was originally seen as a complement to the larger body that could provide high-readiness forces on short notice for circumstances that did not meet the Article 5 threshold. Its remit expanded when Sweden and Finland joined the coalition in 2017, several years before they applied for membership inNATO. It is now seen as a way to sidestep one ofNATO’s weaknesses: any member can block the triggering of Article 5, which requires a unanimous decision. TheJEF, as its then commander, British Major General Jim Morris, said in 2023, “can react to situations on a non-consensus basis”. It has already been activated several times, for exercises and naval patrols.
“TheJEF is the most established of the alternatives,” says Mr Arnold. Its headquarters already has capabilities in intelligence, planning and logistics, he notes. It has its own secure communications networks that, although limited, do not rely onNATO. Britain’s membership offers a degree of nuclear deterrence.
Yet theJEF’s focus remains primarily on the Nordic and Baltic regions. It lacks major powers such as France, Germany and Poland. Some allied officials are anxious about Britain’s defence preparedness: underfunding has left it with few ships, submarines and army units ready to deploy at short notice. “England is everyone’s favourite uncle,” says one official. “But it is suffering from Downton Abbey syndrome. It keeps up the pretence, but it doesn’t have the funds.”
Such problems might be mitigated if the group brought in Germany, which is enormously increasing its defence budget. For all its drawbacks, theJEF seems the best solution if European members are unable to take over the existingNATO framework. But Europe will find some form of joint defence framework to replace the Americans. A deterrent based on someone who may not show up is no deterrent at all. ■
The Ukrainian President believes there are prospects for the constructive reset of the relationship between the two countries.
The German government is keen to learn from Ukraine’s experience defending its electricity grid against attacks, after experiencing recent blackouts caused by sabotaged power lines in its capital.
For more than four years, Russia has battered Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with missiles and drones – at times, much of the country, including its capital Kyiv, was subject to hours of blackout.
Yet, somehow, Berlin found itself in the same boat in January when left-wing extremists with a single firebomb caused the city’s worst multi-day power cut since the Second World War.
Neither emergency services nor politicians were prepared for the disruption that triggered a massive manhunt.
“Energy is no longer a separate sector, it is the operational foundation of the state,” Ukraine’s Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Tuesday at the opening of an energy security conference in Berlin.
Without the “system of systems”, the state is nothing, Shmyhal added.
Kyiv has, by and large, managed to keep going for more than four years, a feat that draws considerable admiration from abroad.
“Resilience is not limited to the institutional level,” said German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, speaking alongside the Ukrainian minister. “In Ukraine, ordinary citizens also help to foster it.”
To learn from Ukraine is to learn to win, Wadephul suggested, saying we should “listen very carefully.”
Kyiv’s recipe is simple: expand the European Union’s trifecta of functioning markets, efficiency, and integration.
“Resilience must become an engineering category,” Shmyhal said. In his besieged country, protecting the grid meant “special protective structures around key energy facilities” and air defence.
“Our second lesson is distributed resilience,” the energy minister explained. Moving away from big, centralised power plants to honeycomb-like decentralised structures “where each element is able to operate with a degree of autonomy”.
Susanne Nies, a think tank expert at the Berlin-based Helmholtz Zentrum, said Germany needed to learn from Ukraine how to operate an electricity network under attack, repair equipment quickly, and create “triple redundancy” strategic reserves of grid equipment.
Berlin must also develop security protocols to be followed before and after attacks, and look at how to diversify and decentralise energy production, she said.
“Time is of the essence; Ukraine acts with courage and quickly, learning through trial and error, something that, unfortunately, is not as widespread in Germany,” Nies told Euractiv.
Olena Pavlenko, who heads the Kyiv-based think tank Dixi Group, said knowledge exchange between Ukraine and Germany is already taking place at multiple levels,” from high-level political exchanges to grid operator talks and municipal-level exchanges.
Germany was focused on shielding vulnerable spots in the grid and building up strategic reserves at the European level, she noted. “Ukraine’s hands-on experience is increasingly shaping European thinking on energy security, transforming the country from a recipient of support into a provider of practical solutions,” Pavlenko told Euractiv.
For Georg Zachmann, an energy specialist at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, Ukraine needs to go further. Kyiv should “finally take stronger steps towards building a defensible energy system alongside the constant patch jobs,” he said.
This would mean getting the most out of “small, system-friendly facilities”, with better planning support from its allies. “Partners should not hesitate to demand reforms from Ukraine that enable such investments,” he added.
Conspicuously absent at the Berlin conference: talk of the issue that saw Shmyhal shoehorned into his role in January. His predecessor, German Galushchenko, is currently being investigated for alleged corruption.
Learning from one another is a “feel-good topic where nobody gets hurt”, as one member of the audience put it.
With the US having cut most of its support for Ukraine after US President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, and Europe stepping in to fill that gap, Germany has become Ukraine’s largest donor. Berlin has contributed some €1.3 billion just through its energy emergency support fund since the onset of the war in 2022.
Officials have long held concerns, usually voiced in private, that some of the money is being skimmed off in the chaos of war.
In late 2024, Berlin effectively got a seat on the board of Ukraine’s high-voltage grid operator Ukrenergo, in the person of former State Secretary Patrick Graichen, who did not attend the event hosted by the foreign ministry.
“The German government has an interest in a supervisory board for the Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo, formed in accordance with OECD standards and comprising several independent, international experts/members,” it said in early 2025.
EU leaders are set to discuss extending the bloc's timeframe for reapproving sanctions against Russia from six months to a year when they convene in Brussels next month.
Democrats acrossEurope, including Turkey, were heartened by voters’ rejection of Viktor Orban in Hungary’s recent elections. His long tenure as prime minister had become a case study in “illiberal democracy”. Elections were held, but the surrounding ecosystem was steadily bent: media were consolidated, courts constrained, civil society pressured and economic power fused with political loyalty.
Much of this resonates far beyond the Danube. Turkey, too, has seen increasingly illiberal leadership and a gradual narrowing of competitive democratic space. Its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came to power in 2003 with popular support and strong democratic rhetoric. Yet over time he has turned ever more authoritarian: controlling the media, building loyalist business networks, muzzling civil society and weaponising the judiciary against the opposition, including my own Republican People’s Party (chp), the second-largest in parliament after Mr Erdogan’s party, Justice and Development (ak). In both Turkey and Hungary, by the late 2010s, politics had shifted from open contestation to managed competition, where electoral outcomes are not predetermined, but increasingly guided by the ruling party.
There are also striking similarities between the democratic opposition movements in both countries. In Hungary’s 2022 election and Turkey’s 2023 election, broad six-party opposition alliances tried to defeat authoritarian incumbents. In both cases, however, these alliances—more focused on strengthening ties between the constituent parties’ elites and other establishment figures than on nurturing grassroots support—struggled to create a genuine opposition movement. What later succeeded was a new political approach that went beyond formal party alliances: politics rooted in popular mobilisation, disciplined messaging and credible leadership.
After the setbacks of 2022 and 2023, opposition movements in both countries learned from their defeats and began to look beyond conventional alliance-building. In Turkey thechp, under my leadership, defeatedakin the 2024 municipal elections. Since then we have been preparing for the next general and presidential elections. In Hungary the opposition under Peter Magyar’s leadership won last month’s general election, securing a parliamentary majority large enough to change the constitution.
But there is also a crucial difference. Hungary is a member of the European Union, and it is now experiencing a peaceful transfer of power. Mr Orban ensured that the recent election was an unfair fight, for instance by rewriting electoral rules to suit his own interests and overseeing a disinformation campaign aimed at tarnishing the opposition. In Turkey Mr Erdogan has walked the same path, but dared to go much farther along it, using loyal elements within the judiciary to suppress the opposition.
Our presidential candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, defeated Mr Erdogan’s handpicked mayoral candidates in 2019 (twice), and again in 2024, and was preparing to compete against Mr Erdogan himself. For this electoral success he has been jailed, along with his associates, on baseless and politically motivated accusations of corruption, espionage and aiding terrorism. Mr Erdogan is now attacking my party’s mayors through fabricated lawsuits, aiming to paralyse our party and create an opposition he can control. Since 2024 around 25chpmayors have been arrested, placed in pre-trial detention and in effect removed from office through judicial and administrative measures.
Still, as in Hungary, resistance to Mr Erdogan’s regime—in the streets, coffeehouses and courtrooms—has sparked a new democratic awakening in Turkish society. My party has embraced bottom-up mobilisation, making the case that economic decline and democratic backsliding are deeply intertwined. We are uniting voters across parties, social groups, ideologies and ethnicities.
ak’s goal is not to eliminate the opposition but to tame it: allowing it to contest elections, and even govern big cities, while forcing it to operate within narrowing constraints. This is not simply a shift from democracy to authoritarianism, but from free competition to containment. Thechp’s task is therefore not only electoral, but also civic: to regenerate democratic confidence and restore citizens’ sense of agency.
Turkey’s case is further complicated by identity. It is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, yet constitutionally secular and socially pluralistic, with a long history of parliamentary democracy. In this sense, Turkey is a crucial test for the universality of democracy, the rule of law, checks and balances, and accountability. While Hungary speaks powerfully to the post-communist experience, Turkey—a country with almost nine times as many people, a regional power, a migration hub, an energy corridor and a key member ofnato(as well as being aneucandidate)—carries broader significance for democracy, from Europe to North America and beyond.
The Kurdish question makes Turkey even more distinctive. Today there is a new peace process between the government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (pkk). Thechpsupports this process, not out of tactical or electoral calculations but for a broader democratic vision. Peace and democracy cannot be separated. This understanding is crucial for the Middle East, where questions of pluralism, representation, citizenship and co-existence remain central to any peaceful future.
The struggle for democracy in Turkey is even more difficult than in Hungary—not simply because Turkey is outside theeu’s institutional framework, but because it is larger, more complex and crisscrossed by geopolitical fault lines. The stakes are higher, and the conditions more challenging. Mr Magyar was able to run in, and win, elections in Hungary. But our presidential candidate has been behind bars for over a year.
In Turkey the democratic struggle is no longer confined to parliament or the ballot box. It is being waged on multiple fronts: in mass rallies, in everyday life on the streets, in courtrooms through legal arguments, and on social media through the wit, creativity and digital fluency of young people. Hungary’s opposition victory energised the global debate on democratic backsliding. A democratic breakthrough in Turkey would transform it. ■
Ozgur Ozel leads the main opposition in Turkey. He is the chair of the Republican People’s Party and a member of parliament for Manisa Province.
Access to future EU aid funding is likely to be tied to preferential treatment for European firms and withheld from backers of the likes of Russia and Iran, EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas has said.
Speaking on Europe Today on Euronews, the EU's top military general Seán Clancy says Ukraine remains the EU’s “number one priority” as war continues to reshape Europe’s defence strategy.