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... The EU's six-month rotating presidencies, when member states take turns steering the bloc, tend to come and go without most people noticing. For diplomats in Brussels, however, the upcoming handover will be anything but business as usual.
At midnight on Sunday, current president Belgium, which hosts the bloc's principal institutions, will pass the baton to Hungary, the country that has acquired a reputation as the EU's perennial spoiler under hard-right populist leader Viktor Orban.
That prospect has raised alarm bells among EU leaders, who have long wrangled with the Hungarian champion of "illiberal democracy", an ally of the Kremlin who has been a constant thorn in Brussels' side.
"This presidency is worrying because Orban is very close to Russia and also to Donald Trump, who could well return to the White House in November," says Ernst Stetter, an EU affairs expert at the Paris-based think tank Fondation Jean-Jaurs.
"Europeans are wary of this presidency because Orban's positions are seen as iconoclastic among most of his EU partners, including among the radical right," adds Pascale Joannin, who heads the EU research centre Fondation Robert Schumann.
The rotating presidency of the European Council of Ministers allows countries at the helm to set the agenda of meetings between the EU's 27 member states in Brussels. In recent years, Hungary has been a frequent disruptor at such meetings, employing vetoes and delaying tactics to water down sanctions against Russia, block military aid to Ukraine and ignore Brussels' rules on upholding the rule of law back home.
"Around 40% of all EU decisions on Ukraine are blocked by Hungary," an exasperated Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania's foreign minister, told reporters in late May. ...
