JULY 6, 2024 11:51 AM CET
BY HANS VON DER BURCHARDBERLIN — Diplomatic tensions are escalating between Germany and Hungary after Budapest canceled a meeting between Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, that had been planned for Monday in Budapest.

The unusual last-minute cancellation — tantamount to a diplomatic éclat — comes after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other EU leaders strongly criticized a trip by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

Baerbock had planned to raise the issue of Orbán’s meeting with Putin during her visit to Budapest on Monday. But “to our surprise, the Hungarian side canceled” the appointment with Szijjártó “at short notice,” a German foreign ministry official told reporters late Friday.

“In view of Prime Minister Orbán’s surprising and uncoordinated tripto Moscow, a serious and honest personal discussion between the two foreign ministers would have been very important. We regret the cancellation,” the official said, adding that the trip would be rescheduled for a later date.

A Hungarian official said that the German foreign ministry and its embassy in Budapest had been informed about the reason of the postponement, but declined to name it publicly.

On Friday, Scholz joined other EU leaders in slamming Orbán for meeting with Putin, stressing that the Hungarian leader — whose country took over the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU at the start of this month — was “travelling to Putin as Hungarian prime minister,” not as an envoy of the EU.

Baerbock, who had planned to visit Budapest for the first time since taking office in December 2021, has a track record of being particularly vocal with her criticism toward Hungary, but also other countries like China.

Scholz also rebuked Orbán last month by denying the Hungarian leader for the second time in a row to be received with military honors and a press conference at the chancellery in Berlin.

Orbán on Saturday was attending a summit of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) in Azerbaijan. “It is in Hungary’s interest to maintain open, peaceful and dynamic economic relations with the countries of the world,” Orbán tweeted from the summit.

Diplomats and world leaders preparing for next week’s NATO summit are privately expressing acute concern about President Joe Biden’s age, health and ability to win the 2024 presidential election.

These foreign officials largely favor Biden’s reelection and fear that Donald Trump’s return to office would damage the NATO alliance and cripple the war effort in Ukraine. But they have reacted to Biden’s recent debate performance with dismay and fear that Biden may be too frail to defeat Trump and lead a global superpower.

POLITICO spoke with 20 people connected to NATO or the alliance’s upcoming summit over the past month and heard that many allies already had quiet reservations about putting their trust in Biden well before the debate. Now, Biden must convince his counterparts that he’s not only up for the fight but will overcome a political crisis to stay in it.

[size=33px]“It doesn’t take a genius to see that the president is old,” said one official from a European NATO country. “We’re not sure that, even if he wins, he can survive four years more.”[/size]
Others went further. “It was painful to watch, let’s be honest,” an EU official said of the debate. “We all want Biden to have a second term to avoid dealing with Trump again, but this isn’t really reassuring.”

Speaking to POLITICO before the U.K.'s change of government on Thursday, a U.K. minister put it most bluntly: “Can the Democrat donors please get their act together and get Biden retired, so we have some chance of a candidate credible for voters?”

Biden already had a tough sell ahead of him at the NATO summit next week, where he was preparing to face questions from allies about America’s commitment to Ukraine. But his catastrophic debate against Trump has turned the gathering into a different kind of assessment of Biden’s physical and political resilience.

Among NATO allies’ concerns is how much longer Biden can muster American support for Europe’s defense, especially after what is likely to be a close election against a Republican former president who is skeptical of assisting partners abroad.

“We’re having more conversations about our own defenses since it looks like Trump is coming back,” an official from a NATO country said after the debate.

On top of that, some NATO allies aren’t wholly satisfied with Biden’s leadership, with many saying he’s been too incremental in his approach to providing weapons and giving Kyiv the go-ahead to strike inside Russia.

“Is the U.S. leading or is it just taking part like everyone else?” asked a senior European diplomat in Washington. The grumbles mainly come from hawkish alliance members — typically in Europe’s east — who want military aid to flood Ukraine without limits on Kyiv’s use of it.

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France's left-wing parties were expected to win the most seats in the Assemblée Nationale, after the second round of snap parliamentary elections, first estimates showed on Sunday, July 7. The far right made significant gains but finished third, behind President Emmanuel Macron's coalition and well below expectations.

The Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance, formed less than three weeks ago by the main left-wing parties, was expected to clinch between 177 and 192 seats, according to the early estimates by Ipsos for France Télévisions, Radio France, France24/RFI and LCP. The far-right Rassemblement National and its allies were projected to win between 138 and 145 seats, and Macron's coalition, Ensemble, between 152 and 158.

"Jordan [Bardella] has no intention of picking a quarrel with Macron, but he has set red lines. On Ukraine, the president will not be able to send troops,” Le Pen said in an interview with the daily Le Télégramme.

The EU's promises to deliver 155 mm artillery shells to Ukraine were not met due to "wishful thinking" and the fact that existing stocks may be "at least twice as modest as stated by high-ranking EU officials," RFE/RL Schemes investigative project reported on July 8.

The lackluster performance of the European defense industry became apparent when the EU failed on its promise to deliver 1 million artillery shells to Ukraine between March 2023 and 2024. After supplying only about half of the promised rounds, Brussels shifted the deadline to the end of 2024.

Journalists found that arms producers in Europe can produce about half as many shells as officials in Brussels claim and that so far, the EU has provided Kyiv with half as many shells as originally promised.

European Commissioner Thierry Breton, for example, claimed in June that EU manufacturers will be able to produce 1.7 million shells per year.

A senior source in the European arms industry, speaking to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity, said that "the current capacity is still only a third of that figure."

Other sources indicated that Europe's production capacity is between roughly 500,000 and 600,000 shells per year. Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said in February that Ukraine needs 200,000 155 mm shells per month.

The European Commission commented that their assessment of the EU production capacity is based on "facts" and "takes into account current investments" in the industry, RFE/RL said.

An Estonian intelligence report from February 2024 estimated that Russia was able to supply as much as 3-4 million units of artillery ammunition to the front in 2023, in part through refurbishing Soviet stocks.

"It is almost certain that Western ammunition deliveries to Ukraine in 2024 will not be able to keep pace," and the gap "in available artillery ammunition between Ukraine and Russia is expected to widen even more in 2024," the report said.

What’s happening now that everyone is spending more, the fact that the Canadians aren’t even trying has become obvious,” said Max Bergmann, a former State Department arms control official.

It’s perhaps surprising that Canada is a laggard on spending even though it’s proven to be a strong ally in other arenas, from its purchase of U.S. weapons to its close coordination with the U.S. in defending North America to its deployment of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

But interviews with a half-dozen diplomats from NATO countries make clear that when it comes to defense spending, allies are fed up.

“They’re going to continue to be obstinate” because there is no real penalty for failing to meet the alliance goal, said one U.S. congressional staffer, who like others quoted in this story was granted anonymity to speak freely about a close ally. “Europeans are frustrated that they’re being criticized and Canada is not feeling the same pressure from Washington.”

One of the 12 founding members of NATO, Canada readily signed the 2014 pledge to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea in Ukraine. The alliance as a whole might have been slow to get there, but this year, 23 of the 32 NATO members will hit the mark as fears grow along the alliance’s eastern front over Putin’s plans.

Two of the holdouts are Canada and Belgium, both of which are not only failing to meet the 2 percent goal but also the requirement to spend 20 percent of that on new equipment.

Unlike Canada, however, Belgium says it’ll get there by 2035. When will Canada? They won’t say.

The Canadian case is particularly frustrating, the diplomats say, because of Ottawa’s seeming lack of urgency, despite significant problems with its aging military equipment and its strong economy. Its military is so underfunded that half of its equipment is considered “unavailable and unserviceable” according to a leaked internal report.

“The Canadian public doesn’t really see the need,” said Philippe Lagassé, Barton chair at Canada’s Carleton University. “If forced to choose between defense spending, social programs or reducing taxes, defense would always come last. So there’s no political gain to meeting the pledge.”

Canada’s stance prompted a bipartisan group of 23 U.S. senators to take the exceedingly rare step of sending a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in May saying they were “concerned and profoundly disappointed that Canada’s most recent projection indicated that it will not reach its 2 percent commitment this decade.”


In a brutally candid interview on Canadian television in June, Canadian Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre said that underinvestment in defense means that “the military that we have right now is not ready to counter the threats that we see coming.” Asked about the lack of a plan to hit 2 percent, he added “I do not defend that, and nobody in uniform defends that.”