Oliver Crook
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
What you had last night was the meeting of the trilogue.
This is the sort of synonym for reconciliation, the discussions that happen at the European level to try to get this now new amended trade deal across.
It did not make a sort of big breakthrough, the sort of swift resolution that Trump wanted.
But we did hear from the EPP party.
This is the biggest party in European Parliament.
basically the final rounds of negotiations with eu member states and the european commission will be scheduled for the 19th of may with the european parliament's final vote expected in june now there are two scenarios here one they get this through the us is happy the second is you start to get these u.s auto tariffs you go back to square one we don't think that's likely because of course the europeans didn't want to deal with the trade war to begin with much less now when there's this issue of straggflation sort of hanging over the economy here
So really a very significant change here, obviously has huge ramifications for the European Union.
Viktor Orban very frequently the only thorn in the side of European Council decisions, basically blocking things, including that loan to Ukraine.
And we should say that really this feels a little bit like a different election campaign than many of the ones that I've covered across Europe.
It was really very intensely emotional on the banks of the Danube last night.
You could really feel the shift in the political atmosphere after 16 years of that rule by Viktor Orban.
it changes a lot of things very fundamentally and also the margin by which Peter Magyar was able to crush Victor Orban I who is going for his fourth consecutive term after 16 years in power he now has a two-thirds majority Petter Magyar that means that he can legislate very freely with the free hand over Hungary it also means he can make changes to the Constitution which is something
that Victor Orban enjoyed during his last term.
So it's really a significant victory, but also the margin is very, very relevant.
In terms of what he'll actually have to do to turn the economy around, that gets a little bit more complicated.
I mean, he's inheriting some of the same problems that brought Victor Orban down, a stagnant economy, but he's vowed to change things, to turn things around in the economy, to sort of cut out the corruption.
Peter Magyar is still a very nationalistic figure.
This is a person that is squarely on the right, really draped in the Hungarian flag.
Even before J.D.
Vance arrived here, he said basically, once again, something we've heard throughout the election campaign, this is an election that will not be decided in Washington, D.C., it will not be decided in Moscow, but it will also not be decided in Brussels.