Donnacha Ó Beacháin

administration which is reaching out to, like, for example, Alternative for Deutschland in Germany, the

very far right party.

And of course, they tried to help Orbán.

That was one of the silver linings.

But just going back to the election result just briefly, I think also this, we can't underestimate that people want to change after 16 years and that it was natural that they would look for an alternative that, you know, wasn't a huge risk, but wasn't more of the same.

But the global picture is still rather dark.

The European picture is rather dark because we've seen the damage that a country like Hungary can

can inflict on the European Union project by the use of the veto.

In my book, for example, I give the salutary lesson of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the 18th century.

This was a very powerful regime stretching from the Baltic Sea almost to the Black Sea.

And they had a very democratic, for its time, political system which allowed a veto for any parliamentarian in the Seine, which was the name of the parliament.

And what happened was, of course, is that the Russians began to buy individual parliamentarians.

The Prussians also, but the Russians were particularly good at it.

And they would veto

the legislation and it paralyzed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

And then through a number of annexations in the late 18th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was no more.

It was divided up between the rival dictatorships, the empires, the Prussians, the Austro-Hungarians and the Russians.

Now, the European Union, you know, with this kind of need for unanimity and consensus surrounded by Trump's U.S., Putin's Russia, and of course, Xi's China in the background, you know, will have to consolidate.

I mean, there's a lot of power in Europe, but I think there's not a lot of confidence.

And it's it's I think the social contract.