By Edina Paleviq
This is part of a roundtable: The Unmaking of Illiberal Power in Hungary.
Domestic political developments in small European Union member states such as Hungary can have wide consequences for the Union. While conventional approaches in international relations associate a country’s influence with material capabilities (economic, industrial, financial), the Hungarian case suggests that small states can exert disproportionate leverage under specific institutional conditions. The mechanism by which EU decision-making rules combine with the strategic political behavior of states to provide them with enhanced influence, referred to as “institutional amplification,” is used to explain how small Hungary gained leverage in the EU, depending on three factors: the existence of unanimity-based decision rules in the EU, its strategic use of veto threats, and its domestic political willingness to sustain obstruction. The analysis draws on a qualitative case study and process-tracing approach, covering Hungary’s use of veto threats in three key EU policy areas between 2010 and 2026: sanctions on Russia, financial and military assistance to Ukraine, and rule-of-law conditionality. The findings show that Hungary was able to delay EU decisions, modify their outcomes, and increase bargaining costs for other member states, although unable to determine final policy trajectories. In concluding that small-state influence in the EU is institutionally enabled but politically contingent, the study has implications for institutional design and decision-making reform.
The Puzzle of Hungarian Influence in the EU
Conventional approaches in international relations usually associate a country’s influence with its material capabilities, understood here as relative economic, military, financial, and geopolitical resources (Baldacchino and Wivel 2020). Thus, elections in states without high levels of these capabilities rarely feature prominently in global media coverage (Long 2017). With a population of fewer than ten million and limited economic and military resources, Hungary, would not normally be expected to be of concern as possibly shaping international outcomes (Central Intelligence Agency 2024; Baldacchino and Wivel 2020). Yet, the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary election attracted an unusually high level of international attention (Euronews 2026a; Santopinto 2026; RCSGS 2026), with policymakers, analysts, and news outlets across Europe and beyond following it closely. This attention certainly did not reflect Hungary’s capabilities but was based instead on the context for the election in a member state that had experienced democratic backsliding and confronted the EU through the strategic use of its veto power over decades, a situation increasingly viewed not as an isolated case but as part of a broader pattern of illiberal governance within Europe (Human Rights Watch 2025).
Therefore, in 2026, the Hungarian election was important for the EU, because it could determine whether the Hungarian government would continue to delay or reshape EU collective decisions on issues of high geopolitical importance, as Viktor Orbán’s government had done (Müller and Slominski 2025; Euronews 2026b) since 2010, particularly in areas requiring consensus among member states. Reflecting this context, a growing scholarship in international relations highlights the role of institutions and bargaining strategies in shaping outcomes (Long 2017; Daßler, Heinkelmann-Wild, and Huysmans 2025). According to this literature, while a change in government in Hungary would not alter that country’s formal role, it could significantly affect how its leverage could be deployed. Because other governments have also shown their willingness to use institutional rules (such as the unanimity rule) strategically to hinder EU decision-making, the outcome of Hungary’s election became significant beyond Hungary. It was seen as having possible implications for the behavior of other member states that have also used institutional leverage and illiberal political strategy to capitalize on the EU’s unanimity rule to their advantage in negotiations, often on fronts other than the decision at stake.
Between 2010 and 2026, successive Hungarian governments repeatedly used veto threats and procedural obstruction in the EU to shape Union decision-making across several policy areas, including sanctions toward Russia, assistance to Ukraine, and rule-of-law conditionality (Müller and Slominski 2025; Euronews 2026b; Politico 2026). This study analyzes how EU dynamics were affected by these threats and procedural strategies. Following a review of the literature on how small states such as Hungary can capture institutional power, the concept of “institutional amplification” is applied to the Hungarian case to examine how veto power operates and identify the conditions under which institutional leverage is effective.
Small States, Institutional Context, and Power Asymmetry
Small states are typically seen as having limited influence in international politics, particularly in materialist and realist traditions. For the purposes of this study, small states are understood as states with relatively limited economic, military, and geopolitical capabilities within the international system as a whole. Classical realist approaches link power to such material capabilities, and therefore scholars in this school of thought expect small states to play only a reactive role in the international arena and merely adapt to the preferences of more powerful actors (Vital 1967; Waltz 1979). However, this view has been widely challenged. For instance, institutional and liberal approaches argue that influence cannot be explained by material capabilities alone but instead depends on how states operate within institutional settings and how they use available rules and procedures to shape outcomes (Keohane 1969; Elman 1995). Research on small states shows that they are indeed not simply constrained by size but able to pursue strategies that allow them to exert influence under certain conditions (Panke 2016). The European Union provides a particularly relevant context for understanding these dynamics. As a highly institutionalized system, it combines supranational governance with strong member-state control. However, because decisions in key policy areas such as foreign policy, sanctions, and financial assistance require unanimous agreement, individual member states, including weaker states, have the formal ability to block collective action, regardless of material power (Slapin 2011; Navarra and Jančová 2023), and gain leverage over the timing and content of collective decisions.
Research shows that small states use a variety of strategies beyond veto rights to overcome structural disadvantages, including coalition-building, agenda-setting, and expertise or persuasion in negotiations (Panke 2016). However, existing scholarship tends to focus on the availability of institutional opportunities rather than on how these opportunities are used in practice (Thorhallsson and Wivel 2006; Panke 2016). As a result, scholars find it difficult to explain variations in small states’ behavior, since institutional rules such as veto rights are often treated as static features that automatically generate influence (Thorhallsson and Wivel 2006; Panke 2016) and institutional opportunities alone are usually not sufficient to explain observed outcomes.
Rather than arising automatically from institutional rules, the leverage available to small states depends on their governments’ willingness to strategically use the institutional tools available to them, for example by making credible threats, sustaining bargaining pressure, and accepting the potential costs of non-cooperation. Institutional rules define the range of possible strategies, but their effects depend on how they are used in specific bargaining situations. In this context, influence is understood as the ability of a member state to delay, modify, condition, or increase the bargaining costs associated with collective EU decisions, that is, to affect how decisions are reached rather than fully control final outcomes. This understanding reflects the procedural nature of influence in consensus-based systems where outcomes are typically shaped through negotiation rather than direct control.
Qualitative Case-Study, Process-Tracing, and Institutional Amplification
The case of Hungary helps understand how institutional rules and domestic political strategies interact to shape small-state influence within the European Union. Between 2010 and 2026 in the run-up to the election, Hungary negotiated over EU sanctions on Russia, financial and military assistance to Ukraine, and rule-of-law conditionality linked to EU funding. These key decision-making areas are selected here to analyze institutional leverage because they share two important characteristics: they are based on unanimity and involve politically salient decisions.
Process tracing is a qualitative method that reconstructs a sequence of events in order to explain how one factor leads to another (George and Bennett 2005). In this study, it is used to identify how formal institutional rights, particularly veto power under unanimity rules, were translated into political influence for Hungary. This method can highlight how institutional rules created opportunities for Hungary’s leverage, how Hungarian successive governments used those opportunities, and how other EU actors responded in specific decision-making episodes in which Hungary exerted its leverage, therefore allowing for a better understanding of the mechanisms linking institutional structures, political agency, and policy outcomes. While using this approach does not mean seeking to test potential correlations, it does permit an examination of how specific strategies, such as veto threats, procedural delay, and issue linkage, shaped bargaining dynamics in concrete decision-making episodes. Process tracing also makes it possible to study how veto power operates in practice and to identify the conditions under which institutional leverage is effective. Thus, this perspective shifts the focus from formal institutional design to political practice.
To explain the interaction between institutional opportunity and the political agency of small states, the concept of “institutional amplification” is used. It refers to a conditional mechanism through which institutional rules (such as formal decision-making rules) increase the bargaining leverage of a materially weaker actor when that actor uses those rules strategically. The notion of amplification is used to capture that institutional rules do not generate power independently but magnify the effects of actions taken within them, in that an intervention produces greater consequences under specific institutional conditions than the same intervention would outside them. In this sense, institutional rules operate as a multiplier that increases the effective weight of a state’s behavior in the bargaining process by raising the costs of non-agreement for others. Small states can be said to use, or “amplify,” institutional conditions to build their influence, which Hungary did between 2010 and 2026. In demonstrating how institutional amplification operates in a highly institutionalized setting such as the EU, this study focuses on a single case to develop a theoretically informed explanation of how institutional leverage can operate under specific conditions. It is not intended to be fully generalizable but rather to provide a theoretical foundation.
The empirical analysis draws on a variety of qualitative documentary evidence, which helps cross-check key events and interpretations. Primary sources include official EU documents, such as European Council conclusions and European Commission reports, as well as public statements by national and EU officials. These are complemented by secondary sources such as policy analyses and reporting by major international media outlets covering negotiations on sanctions, Ukraine assistance, and rule-of-law disputes. Sources being limited to what is publicly available, they do not capture informal or confidential negotiations among member states, which constitutes one limitation of the study. Moreover, since the study is focused on the relationship between domestic political agency and the use of institutional leverage in EU decision-making, it does not aim to provide a comprehensive analysis of Hungarian domestic politics or electoral behavior. Instead, the 2026 election is envisaged as an opportunity for a shift in Hungary’s use of institutional power rather than as an object of electoral analysis in itself. In addition, given the recency of the 2026 election, its longer-term effects remain uncertain. The sources are used to reconstruct key negotiation episodes and trace sequences linking three elements: the EU institutional context, the strategic actions of the Hungarian government, and the responses by other EU actors. Tracing such sequence does not merely describe events but identifies how their interaction produces observable effects in EU decision-making.
From Compliance to Strategic Use of Institutional Leverage in Hungary (2010-2026)
Following its accession to the European Union in 2004, Hungary largely conformed to conventional expectations associated with small states in the Union, prioritizing integration, coalition-building, and reliable participation in collective decision-making. Over time, however, this diplomatic orientation shifted. Especially after 2010, the Hungarian government increasingly adopted a confrontational style within the EU, treating unanimity-based procedures less as safeguards of participation than as instruments of bargaining leverage, especially in high-salience negotiations. This strategic shift was widely observed in both policy and academic debates. Rather than relying on consensus-seeking behavior typically associated with small-state diplomacy, Hungary increasingly positioned itself as an outlier among its peers (Thorhallsson and Wivel 2006; Panke 2016; Stefanova 2024). For instance, Máté Szalai (2024) characterizes Hungarian foreign policy as disruptive in both EU and NATO decision-making, highlighting a shift toward divisive and obstructionist practices away from consistent cooperation. Müller and Slominski (2025) identify a similar pattern, showing how Hungary transformed veto opportunities into bargaining resources that extended beyond individual policy dossiers. In policy areas governed by unanimity, successive Hungarian governments increasingly signaled that consent could not be assumed and that agreement would require accommodation. Importantly, Hungary’s strategy did not amount to systematic non-cooperation but was applied selectively, particularly in cases where other member states faced strong incentives to preserve unity and avoid visible deadlock. These conditions were especially evident across three clusters of negotiations: sanctions on Russia, assistance to Ukraine, and rule-of-law conditionality linked to EU funding.
Sanctions on Russia: Delay, Exemptions, and Procedural Leverage
The clearest use of institutional amplification by Hungary appears in the EU 2022 negotiations over the sixth sanctions package against Russia. Because decisions on sanctions require unanimous approval and periodic renewal, they create recurring moments in which a single government can slow, condition, or complicate collective action (Slapin 2011; Müller and Slominski 2025). When the European Commission proposed a comprehensive ban on Russian oil, the Hungarian government obstructed the measure for twenty-six days. By threatening a veto, Budapest ultimately secured for itself a near-total exemption for pipeline-delivered oil, allowing it to continue imports while other member states committed to a broader embargo (Herszenhorn, Barigazzi, and Moens 2022).
This outcome underscores the practical implications of Hungary’s leverage on EU decision-making. It demonstrates how a credible veto threat can alter the content of a policy without preventing its final adoption, as delays in agreement-making increase the political costs of maintaining unanimity and create incentives for compromise. Here, institutional amplification operated primarily through delay and targeted exemptions. Negotiations were prolonged, alternative formulations had to be explored, and the imperative of unity strengthened Hungary’s bargaining position as it threatened to block consensus. Moreover, the structure of the sanctions regime reinforced this leverage because these decisions are not one-off events. Repeated renewals created further opportunities for Hungary to signal resistance and reopen bargaining, a dynamics that Müller and Slominski (2025) describe as “hostage taking.”
Assistance to Ukraine and Shift to Cross-Issue Bargaining
Building on the procedural leverage observed in the sanctions regime, a second cluster of negotiations concerns European Union financial and military assistance to Ukraine in the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In this area, Hungary’s use of leverage extended beyond individual decisions and began to shape negotiations across multiple policy domains. A particularly consequential example is the prolonged blockage of reimbursements under the European Peace Facility, the primary instrument for compensating member states for arms supplied to Ukraine. Because decisions under this facility require unanimous approval (Slapin 2011; Navarra and Jančová 2023), the Hungarian government was able to halt disbursements for two years (Barigazzi 2026), not as a passive expression of political disagreement but as part of a broader bargaining strategy. The unanimity requirement allowed the Hungarian government to link decisions on military assistance to wider negotiations over EU recovery and cohesion funds and turn a procedural vote into a source of leverage in intra-EU bargaining. The resulting delay produced a backlog of more than €40 billion in pending reimbursements and, in response, compelled the European Union to develop alternative arrangements to sustain military support. When the Hungarian government eventually lifted its veto, €6.6 billion were released immediately, underscoring the scale and practical significance of the obstruction (Barigazzi 2026).
More importantly, the blockage redistributed financial and political pressure across member states. By withholding approval, the Hungarian government shifted the distribution of financial burdens across the Union, placing short-term pressure on the member states that had already provided military assistance in anticipation of compensation. At the same time, the interruption redirected institutional efforts toward workaround solutions, thereby illustrating how the use of a veto within a single instrument can reshape both the process and the substance of collective decision-making. Hungary’s position therefore influenced not only the adoption of decisions but also the way in which the financial and political consequences of these decisions were managed among member states (Barigazzi 2026).
Negotiations over assistance to Ukraine gradually became intertwined with broader political disputes between Budapest and EU institutions. In 2026, the Hungarian government signaled its willingness to block additional measures, including a substantial EU loan to Ukraine, in the context of disagreements over energy policy, EU funding, and pipeline-related issues (Barigazzi 2026). Rather than evaluating these measures in isolation, the Hungarian government incorporated them into a wider bargaining strategy, in which decisions linked to Ukraine were used to exert pressure in parallel negotiations across different policy areas.
By connecting multiple policy arenas in this way, the Hungarian government expanded the scope of its veto power and increased the costs of continued deadlock for other member states. As negotiations became more interconnected, delays in one domain generated pressure across others, strengthening incentives for compromise in order to preserve overall agreement. This marked a shift from procedural delay to cross-issue bargaining. Hungary’s strategy surrounding assistance to Ukraine illustrates how institutional leverage can evolve from causing procedural delay to triggering cross-issue bargaining over several areas of EU policy simultaneously. This evolution explains why the 2026 parliamentary election attracted sustained international attention, as it introduced uncertainty about whether this pattern of leverage-seeking would persist or if Hungary could shift toward a more cooperative use of unanimity-based rules (Euronews 2026a), presumably if Orbán were ousted.
Rule-of-Law Conditionality and the Expansion of Bargaining Conflict
A third cluster of negotiations concerns rule-of-law conditionality and European Union funding, as conflicts between Hungary and the EU were rooted in disagreements over democratic backsliding and corruption risks in Hungary. Under this mechanism, in December 2022 the Council decided to suspend approximately €6.3 billion in commitments to Hungary, concluding that risks to the Union’s budget remained despite some rule-of-law remedial measures taking place in Hungary (Council of the European Union 2022). These conflicts eventually moved beyond the specific rule-of-law question to become embedded in broader bargaining dynamics, notably those concerning Ukraine. Indeed, in response to this disagreement over the rule-of-law and related frozen EU funds, Hungary blocked several key EU decisions requiring unanimity, including an €18 billion financial assistance package for Ukraine (Melchior 2022), indicating that Hungary’s use of veto power was closely tied to negotiations over financial conditionality (Melchior 2022) and pointing to Hungary’s consistent pattern of cross-domain bargaining. In a system depending on unanimity, such linkages ended up increasing the costs of agreement for other member states and strengthening incentives for a compromise among them to maintain EU institutional cohesion (Slapin 2011). Furthermore, Hungary’s actions raised broader concerns among EU actors that veto power could be used in a systematic and confrontational manner, particularly in the context of ongoing rule-of-law disputes (Slapin 2011). Therefore, the election was widely understood as a potential turning point not in Hungary’s formal position within the EU, but in how Hungary would use its institutional leverage to continue to engage in cross-domain bargaining and exert veto-based pressure.
Rethinking Small-State Power
In spite of its influence on EU decision-making, the effect of Hungary’s cross-issue bargaining remained bounded: Hungary did not fully determine the outcomes of negotiations in any of the three cases examined here. Sanctions were ultimately adopted, financial assistance to Ukraine continued through alternative mechanisms, and rule-of-law conditionality remained in place. Institutional leverage therefore operated primarily through process-oriented effects, as Hungary’s influence remained overall procedural and relational rather than factually decisive and absolute. Therefore, the case of Hungary corroborates that in the EU context, unanimity rules do not automatically grant small states decisive power; rather, they create opportunities for influence when a government is willing to threaten non-consent, sustain delay, link one policy dispute to another, and accept the political costs of obstruction. Amplification occurs through a clear sequence: an institutional veto opportunity exists; a credible threat or obstruction is applied; an increase in bargaining costs for other member states results; and an eventual policy modification, concession, or workaround emerges. Thus, the small state may shape the timing, content, and costs of decisions without necessarily controlling the final policy outcome.
What this analysis shows is that Hungary’s influence within the EU between 2010 and 2026 did not derive from its economic or military strength but from the way it was able to amplify institutional rules to its advantage across various policy areas. In this context, the international community was particularly focused on the 2026 Hungarian election, as it highlighted broader concerns about the power of member states to exert bargaining pressure through the requirement for unanimity. Indeed, while the 2026 election resulted in a change of government, the broader question remains whether this shift will lead to a re-evaluation of confrontational strategies or if the incentives provided by EU institutional design will continue to foster similar patterns of behavior by other actors.
These findings challenge conventional assumptions that small states in the EU can only seek influence through coalition-building and consensus. Instead, the case of Hungary illustrates that power in the Union does not depend solely on material capabilities or formal voting weight; it also depends on the ability of states to use procedural rules strategically within a system that prioritizes consensus. As demonstrated, such systems can indeed amplify the leverage of individual member states, with implications for the future design and functioning of EU decision-making. Beyond the Hungarian case, this study can help the EU prepare for similar situations likely to emerge when formal decision-making rules grant individual actors veto authority while collective action depends on cohesion among participants. Future research will be critical to determine if the transition in Hungary marks a return to cooperative norms or persistence of institutionally enabled obstruction.
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