The European Council’s new political arithmetic

Four new prime ministers will join EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday, reshuffling the political arithmetic inside the bloc’s most powerful decision-making body.

Since the last European Council meeting eight weeks ago, leadership changes in four member countries — or about 15 percent of the EU’s 27 heads of government — have created fresh uncertainty about how leaders will line up on the EU’s biggest fights.

The changes come just as governments prepare for battles over the bloc’s next €2 trillion budget, energy policy and foreign affairs.

Hovering over the summit is another question: Who inherits the role long occupied by Viktor Orbán?

The former Hungarian prime minister spent years frustrating colleagues by blocking, delaying and bargaining over EU decisions. With Orbán now out of office, diplomats are looking for signs of where opposition may emerge in the Council’s next chapter.

“The biggest change with those four will be the one that’s not there,” a European diplomat told POLITICO, referring to Orbán. They were granted anonymity like others in this story to speak candidly.

The pro-EU conservative: Hungary’s Péter Magyar

Forty days after taking office on May 9 following a landslide victory that upended Hungary’s political order, Péter Magyar has already transformed Budapest’s relationship with Brussels. His government has unlocked billions of euros in EU funds that had been frozen for years under predecessor Viktor Orbán.

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar answers questions by the opposition in the main hall of the parliament building in Budapest, Hungary, on June 15, 2026. | Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images

By stepping aside on Ukraine and allowing Kyiv to launch the first phase of EU accession talks this week, Magyar has further cemented his reputation as a constructive, pro-European leader. A former Hungarian diplomat in Brussels and MEP, he knows the institutions well and is expected to avoid the combative style that defined Orbán’s dealings with the bloc. The first European diplomat described him as a “skillful” operator.

The bigger question is where Magyar, a center-right conservative whose Tisza party sits in the European People’s Party, will preserve elements of Orbán’s agenda. On energy, he has pledged to wean Hungary off Russian imports — but only by 2035, well beyond the EU’s 2027 target.

On migration, Magyar has signaled similar continuity. He plans to keep the border fence erected by Orbán in 2015 and opposes the bloc’s migrant relocation quotas, aligning him broadly with leaders such as Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen and Poland’s Donald Tusk. It was no coincidence that his first official trip as prime minister was to Warsaw. He has also called for reviving — and expanding — the Visegrád 4 group of Central European countries.

Tensions between Budapest and Brussels may yet resurface. But when Magyar walks the flag-lined red carpet of the Europa building on Thursday, he will arrive buoyed by a fresh electoral mandate and newly repaired ties with the EU — and viewed, in grateful contrast to his gleefully disruptive predecessor, as a more predictable partner.

The Ukraine skeptic: Bulgaria’s Rumen Radev

Bulgaria’s former president ended years of domestic political deadlock when he resigned in January, launched his own party and swept to victory in the ensuing election. Although he has previously attended European Council meetings due to a constitutional quirk that barred caretaker prime ministers from representing Sofia in Brussels, this will be his first summit as head of government.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev speaks to the media following talks with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin on May 18, 2026. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images

His arrival could complicate efforts to maintain the EU’s united front on Ukraine.

Radev argued last year that Kyiv is “doomed” in its war against Russia and opposed increasing EU military aid or “pouring more weapons” into Ukraine. He also blamed European leaders for backing Ukraine’s counteroffensive, saying it had resulted in “hundreds of thousands” of casualties.

He memorably clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a televised meeting in 2023, when the Ukrainian leader publicly rebuked him over what critics described as Kremlin-friendly positions. The episode placed Radev in a camp that includes Slovakia’s Robert Fico, another frequent critic of Western support for Ukraine who has cultivated warmer ties with Moscow.

Several Brussels insiders are already wary. Bulgaria could become a stumbling block in negotiations over future sanctions on Russia, according to a second and third European diplomats. The EU hopes to approve a 21st sanctions package in the coming months, but the second diplomat said Sofia is already “digging their heels in,” though the source of its objections remains unclear.

Still, the third diplomat questioned whether Radev would be willing — or able — to play the kind of obstructionist role that Orbán long occupied in the Council.

The Israel defender: Slovenia’s Janez Janša

A familiar figure in Brussels, Janez Janša is returning to the European Council for a fourth stint as Slovenia’s prime minister. His comeback adds another right-wing populist to the table — a self-described Trump admirer with a combative relationship with the media. Sound familiar?

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša arrives ahead of the EU-Western Balkans summit at Porto Montenegro in Tivat on June 5, 2026. | Savo Prelevic/AFP via Getty Images

Janša indeed has some Orbán-like tendencies. But there is one major difference: The Slovenian leader is among Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, backing both military aid and Kyiv’s EU membership bid. He also traveled to Ukraine in the opening weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion in a show of solidarity.

Where Janša could prove more obstructionist is on Israel.

Several EU countries want to sanction Israel’s hardline national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, over the treatment of Europeans detained aboard a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, according to the draft summit conclusions dated June 12 and seen by POLITICO. But Janša is expected to oppose such measures, alongside countries including Germany and the Czech Republic.

In recent weeks, he has gone further than many of Israel’s European defenders, reversing Slovenia’s arms embargo on Israel and lifting an entry ban on both Ben-Gvir and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel subsequently announced plans to open an embassy in Ljubljana, a move Janša hailed as “a new era in Slovenia-Israel relations.”

That opposition may not be decisive, however. If Germany softens its stance on sanctions, other holdouts — including Slovenia — could become more willing to fall into line, according to the first European diplomat.

The Russia hawk: Latvia’s Andris Kulbergs

Latvia’s parliament last month voted to make petrolhead businessman-turned-politician Andris Kulbergs the new prime minister, after a political crisis caused by a series of accidental Ukrainian drone incursions in Latvian airspace led to the resignation of former premier Evika Siliņa.

Andris Kulbergs, Latvia’s new prime minister, speaks at a press conference after the vote for the approval of the new cabinet of government ministers in the Saeima in Riga on May 28, 2026. | Gints Ivuskans/AFP via Getty Images

Kulbergs first entered parliament in 2022, doesn’t belong to any party and has never been a minister, but has the backing of a broad coalition. With just four months before Latvia’s general election, his government’s priority is shoring up the country’s anti-drone defenses to better respond to future airspace breaches.

That comes as the bloc’s leaders are set to discuss on Thursday and Friday how to secure the bloc’s airspace on its eastern flank, according to the summit’s draft conclusions, and express “full solidarity” with member countries exposed to such threats.

The Latvian prime minister has pledged to continue Riga’s stalwart support for Ukraine, signing a drone deal with Kyiv in the first days of his premiership. Latvia is in the company of the EU’s top defense spenders and fellow Russia hawks Poland, Lithuania and Estonia.

Koen Verhelst contributed to this report.