Renaming the EU, Dismantling the Commission: For What Polish and Hungarian Illiberals Seek U.S. Backing
Photo: Zoltán Fischer (Hungarian PM's Office) 2025-03-10
Photo: Zoltán Fischer (Hungarian PM's Office) 2025-03-10
The Trump administration’s most influential think tank, The Heritage Foundation, is receiving proposals from illiberal forces in Poland and Hungary on how to shape the future of the European Union. The proposals, obtained by VSquare, include dismantling key EU institutions and renaming the entire bloc.
As the Trump administration advances The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda, the influential conservative think tank is forging closer ties with illiberal forces in Poland and Hungary to shape its stance on the European Union.
A forthcoming closed-door workshop at Heritage underscores this growing alliance, featuring key contributions from Hungary’s Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) and Poland’s Ordo Iuris Institute for Legal Culture. MCC is essentially a GONGO – a government-organized non-governmental organization – serving as a front for Viktor Orbán’s government, while Ordo Iuris has close ties to Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice opposition party.
The Hungarian-Polish duo is set to present proposals to the Trump administration’s leading think tank on dismantling the European Commission and the European Court of Justice, as well as renaming the European Union to the European Community of Nations (ECN).
An invitation to the event, sent by Heritage’s former vice president James J. Carafano and obtained by VSquare, highlights its significance:
“The future of EU Treaty Reform will greatly impact transatlantic relations. Understanding how that might unfold is critical for those invested in a Europe that is whole, free, at peace, and prosperous. To that end, we have organized this important workshop on March 11 at 2 PM EST at The Heritage Foundation.”
Central to the discussion will be a new report titled The Great Reset: Restoring Member State Sovereignty in the 21st Century, prepared by MCC and Ordo Iuris. The report presents two paths for EU reform, advocating for a decentralized model in opposition to the 2024 push for deeper European integration through treaty amendments. This aligns with the long-standing efforts of Hungary’s government and Poland’s former ruling party to undermine European Union institutions.
Invitees to the event include various right-wing think tanks and foundations from the U.S. and Europe, including the Alliance Defending Freedom (here’s our previous article on them), as well as former Trump administration officials.
Renaming the European Union to the European Community of Nations
VSquare also obtained a two-page brief summary (“factsheet”) of the reform proposals, titled The Great Reset. An Urgent Need for Drastic Reform, set to be presented and debated with Heritage.
MCC and Ordo Iuris propose a complete institutional overhaul of the European Union, essentially dismantling the European Commission and the European Court of Justice as they currently exist (the paper can be downloaded here).
First page of the MCC-Ordo Iuris paper
“EU institutions, particularly the European Parliament (EP) and European Commission (EC), have expanded their authority beyond their original mandate, forcing EU laws to override national legislation, weakening Member States’ ability to govern independently,” the paper argues, adding that “EU bodies increasingly impose ideologically motivated policies on Member States, without any mandate.”
The MCC-Ordo Iuris plan proposes transforming the European Commission into a purely technical body, stripping it of real political influence and reducing it to a General Secretariat. As a result, infringement procedures and significant legislative initiatives – often used against Orbán’s government and Poland’s former Law and Justice government due to their numerous violations of EU law while cracking down on independent institutions, such as the judiciary – would be abolished.
Similarly, they aim to render the European Court of Justice (ECJ) effectively powerless by severely restricting its authority over national legal systems, citing the need to curb “judicial activism” and prevent interference with “national sovereignty”.
In a symbolic move signaling the end of the European Union as we know it, MCC and Ordo Iuris propose renaming it the European Community of Nations (ECN) – a loose coalition of nation-states designed to emphasize national sovereignty.
Second page of the MCC-Ordo Iuris paper
While the proposal does not explicitly reference it, the concept bears a resemblance to the Russia-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States, the successor to the Soviet Union.
Profit Originating from Russia
The collaboration between Ordo Iuris, MCC, and Heritage is noteworthy in itself, but the two Central European organizations reported connections to Russian influence add another layer of scrutiny. While Ordo Iuris leaders have denied pro-Russian affiliations, the organization has long engaged with networks that promote Kremlin-aligned narratives, including Agenda Europe and the World Congress of Families – a group linked to Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev. (VSquare has published multiple investigations into the international network-building of Ordo Iuris, see examples here, here and here.)
MCC, led by Viktor Orbán’s political director Balázs Orbán, has also faced questions regarding its financial and ideological connections to Russian interests. The think tank is largely funded through dividends from Hungarian oil company MOL’s trade in Russian oil. A recent ZDF report pointed out that MCC earned €50 million in 2023 from MOL share dividends, with 65% of MOL’s oil coming from Russia – effectively using Russian oil profits to promote Orbán’s agenda.
In 2022, John Laughland, an MCC visiting fellow at the time, was briefly detained in the UK on suspicion of espionage for Russia.
More recently, a German investigation revealed that MCC’s Brussels-based publication, The European Conservative, employed a journalist secretly working for Voice of Europe, a Kremlin-funded disinformation outlet dismantled in 2024 by European counterintelligence agencies. MCC declined to comment on the report.
As The Heritage Foundation continues to shape the Trump administration’s policy, its collaboration with these illiberal actors from Central Europe raises serious questions about the future direction of transatlantic relations and U.S. conservative engagement in European affairs.
This story is based on VSquare’s Goulash newsletter – read the full issue here with fresh scoops and a round-up of our latest investigations from Central Europe.
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VSquare’s Budapest-based lead investigative editor in charge of Central European investigations, Szabolcs Panyi is also a Hungarian investigative journalist at Direkt36. He covers national security, foreign policy, and Russian and Chinese influence. He was a European Press Prize finalist in 2018 and 2021.