OK, don't get me started on PM Orban.
He is the leader of the Country that currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU.
And there is some, I'll say, dismay among the other Countries of the EU. ...
... Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban engineered another diplomatic divide with his European Union counterparts, pointedly siding with Georgia's ruling party as the winner of parliamentary elections.
Orban, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, told Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze during a visit to Georgia on Tuesday that he should ignore complaints about the election from the 27-nation bloc, and said the vote was free and democratic.
"European politics has its handbook, it is worth knowing: when liberal parties win, there is democracy, when conservatives win, there is not," Orban told a joint news conference in the capital, Tbilisi. "Because the conservatives won, there will be debates, and they are not to be taken seriously."
Prior to Orban's departure for Georgia, the EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell told Spanish public radio RNE that the rotating presidency conferred no authority in foreign policy on the Hungarian premier. A joint statement signed by ministers from 13 EU countries on Monday, including Germany, France, Poland and the Netherlands, said Orban doesn't speak for the bloc.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told the TT news agency that Orban "possibly speaks for Russia, but he does not speak for the rest of us."
The Hungarian leader has a history of provoking fellow EU leaders with foreign visits since the start of his country's six-month presidency, even as he often insists he's not representing the bloc. He sparked outrage days into the term in July by meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing as part of a self-styled "peace mission." ...
