Hungary and Bulgaria elections: EU's new ally and new adversary?

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In this week's Talking Europe, we take a moment to check the pulse of the European Parliament following a spate of European elections, to see how they'll impact the EU – and whether the EU should weigh on European domestic politics at all.

The end of 16 years of power for Viktor Orban in Hungary may signal the end of an era of veto-wielding from Budapest, but how much of an ally will his successor be? Peter Magyar met with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week, with the objective of laying out a framework of reforms that will ensure Hungary can receive billions of frozen EU funds – funds that were suspended over rule-of-law issues under the previous government.

Further to the east, Bulgarian voters went to the polls for the eighth time in five years and, perhaps fed up with the instability, voted massively in favour of the former president and former fighter pilot Rumen Radev. He's known for his Eurosceptic views and positions more closely aligned with Russia on topics such as Ukraine than may suit European institutions.

Those two results shake up the political kaleidoscope in Europe – and may shake up the plans of other populist politicians in the EU, such as Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico. Indeed, one conclusion from the EU's freezing of funds to Hungary could be that Brussels is able to leverage those funds to punish governments it considers aren't playing by its rules. We ask if that's really the EU's role.

To discuss these issues, we're joined by Katarina Roth Nevedalova, a non-attached MEP from Slovakia from the party of Prime Minister Robert Fico; by Kristian Vigenin, S&D MEP from Bulgaria and former Bulgarian foreign minister; and by Daniel Freund, a Green MEP from Germany, who co-chairs the Anti-Corruption Intergroup in the European Parliament.

Programme prepared by Oihana Almandoz, Isabelle Romero, Perrine Desplats and Aline Bottin