We will probably never know for sure whether PM Viktor Orbán meant to say no to the agreement reached at the EU summit, but the major question for now is whether Orbán’s quick reversal heralds an actual willingness to enter into the fiscal union proposed by Germany and France. Unlike the sole remaining holdout in rejecting the agreement, the United Kingdom, Hungary is extremely dependent on the EU. The government has relentlessly emphasised that it will protect Hungarian sovereignty from Brussels, but it has been known to occasionally acknowledge the inevitable need for compromise, witness its current eagerness to conclude an agreement with the IMF. With the need to make a decision on this crucial issue, the government’s policy of co-operating with the European Union behind the scenes while lambasting it in public is no longer tenable.

Policy Solutions' analysis on PM Viktor Orbán's approach towards the fiscal union can be downloaded from here.