The English adaptation of the German political text was created by the ChatGPT‑5 AI
For an English-speaking reader:
“Die Machtfrage” is one of those political-philosophical terms in German that does not translate cleanly. Literally it means “the question of power”, but in German political thinking it implies something far more specific.
It marks the moment when a political conflict strips away legal arguments, procedures, and moral justifications, and reveals its hard core:
Who gets to decide? Who has the authority to impose consequences? Who can prevail?
In other words, “Die Machtfrage” is not asked rhetorically — it is posed through action. It is the point where a system must answer, whether it wants to or not, who ultimately governs.
The concept carries echoes of three traditions:
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The Prussian State Tradition — where the state is defined by its capacity to command and enforce.
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Carl Schmitt’s Decisionism — “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”
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Modern Constitutional Practice — where power hides behind law until law no longer resolves the conflict.
When Germans say that a situation has become a Machtfrage, they mean:
It can no longer be managed by interpretation, negotiated by procedure, or disguised by rhetoric. It must be settled — and in settling, reveals the true distribution of power.
That is why the term feels alien in English: the English political tradition prefers process, precedent, and compromise.
The German one, at its core, recognizes that every system eventually confronts its Machtfrage — and that moment is constitutive.
Abstract
The Hungarian decision to offer political asylum to a senior Polish figure is not a legal curiosity. It is a stress test of the European Union’s power architecture. It forces Berlin, Brussels and Luxembourg to operate in the open. The sober conclusion is a cold one: law is not the medium of the conflict — power is. Europe has entered a definitional phase of its political self-understanding.
I. From Legal Facade to Political Reality
The reflexive response across Europe was to treat the affair as a legal problem: a case about asylum rules, criminal proceedings, compatibility with EU law.
Under analytical scrutiny, this approach fails. Legal categories merely carry a deeper conflict whose object is not law but sovereignty. Asylum here is not a humanitarian exception but a political instrument.
The familiar line — “This should be examined by the Court of Justice” — repeated prominently by Deutsche Welle, is not a neutral suggestion. It marks the opening of a political manoeuvre. In Berlin such phrases are never casual. They signal a sequence:
Discourse → Legal Framing → Supranational Enforcement.
In that sequence, law is not a neutral arbiter. It is an instrument of a higher authority.
II. Berlin’s Role: From the Shadows to the Stage
The speed with which the German media complex engaged the story is telling.
The FAZ does not comment on provincial eccentricities; Deutsche Welle does not editorialise about marginalities; Die Zeit does not produce explanatory material by accident.
Where these organs appear, the decision in Berlin has already been taken — not formally, but strategically. They prepare the discursive ground before the political apparatus deploys its tools.
The hesitant initial tone (“absurd”, “requires verification”, “may need review by the CJEU”) betrays that the operational phase had not yet begun. The system probes rhetorically before it strikes institutionally.
That Berlin must enter the stage at all reveals the nature of the conflict: it is not legally provocative, but architecturally challenging.
III. Power Structure and Integration Logic
For decades, European integration has been described in normative terms:
a community of law, of values, of procedures and competences.
The vocabulary is accurate, but incomplete. Beneath the surface lies power integration.
Three mechanisms matter:
Competence accumulation through jurisprudence (Luxembourg),
Discursive legitimisation through media and think tanks (Berlin/Brussels),
Political execution via sanctions, conditionality and regulation.
The Hungarian asylum case displays the mechanism in pure form:
Orbán uses national law to shelter an ally,
Berlin uses supranational law to correct national deviation.
This is not a dispute about corruption allegations, but about who defines whom.
IV. The Machtfrage and the New Illiteracy
Europe suffers from a modern form of political illiteracy: an inability to think of power as normal rather than pathological.
We cultivate governance without command, law without enforcement, institutions without actors.
Those who ask elementary Machtfragen:
Who compels?
With what instruments?
On which level?
At what cost?
are dismissed as cynics.
The poverty lies not in cynicism, but in ignorance.
The ability to see institutions as actors and conflicts as struggles for primacy has become rare. Universities do not teach it; faculties of international law actively avoid it.
The irony is that the skill survives mainly among the over-seventies who acquired their political knowledge through experience rather than seminars. It is a dying capital — a fraction of a fraction of the professorial class.
V. The Definitional Phase
The crucial sentence is this:
This is not a legal case, but a definitional moment.
Europe has reached a point where its structure can no longer hide. It must choose whether it is:
a community of law without political authority, or
a political authority with a legal facade.
The Hungarian asylum affair is therefore not a scandal but a symptom.
It exposes Europe at its weakest point: the question of sovereignty.
If Berlin must switch on the lights,
Brussels invokes values,
and Luxembourg cites paragraphs,
the affair is not about a Polish minister, nor about Hungary, nor about Poland.
It is about the ancient question Europe no longer dares to ask:
Who defines? Who compels?
Who claims primacy?
That — beneath every legal veneer —
is the Machtfrage in its purest form.
II. The Berlin–Luxembourg Axis: Legal Power without a State
Europe operates a power structure not foreseen in the treaties, but effective nonetheless: the Berlin–CJEU axis, with Brussels as procedural buffer. This is not classical hegemony but a post-national configuration based on definition, procedure and judicial execution.
1. Berlin as Generator of Normative Legitimacy
Berlin does not rule through population or military strength, but by defining European normality through three mechanisms:
Discursive precedence — German media set the conceptual frame of debate;
Normative framing — terms like “rule of law”, “European values”, “judicial independence” become standards;
Error-marking — deviations are classified as problems requiring correction.
Berlin rarely decides operationally, but often pre-decides. A state that is discursively labelled as deviant loses long before Luxembourg rules. Orbán therefore fights not Brussels, but Berlin’s monopoly of definition.
2. Luxembourg as Executor without Force
The CJEU possesses no coercive means, yet performs the role of a constitutional sovereign without a state. Its power rests on:
reinterpretation of treaties,
expansion of supranational competence,
hierarchisation of legal sources,
suspension of national law,
financial sanctions.
It produces primacy without statehood — a silent revolution executed through jurisprudence.
3. Brussels as Procedural Mask
The Brussels institutions convert definition into process. The operational chain is:
Berlin (definition) → Brussels (procedure) → Luxembourg (execution).
Berlin articulates the standard, Brussels codifies it in procedures, Luxembourg renders it final. The result is a hegemonic cascade whose authority is semantic, procedural and judicial, not military.
4. Why the Mechanism Works
It works because it commands three forms of coercion:
financial (conditionality, funds),
legal (inapplicability of national law),
reputational (discursive isolation).
Reputation is the most effective instrument. No member state can afford to be marked as an “abnormal system”. Even France submits, though it rhetorically resists.
III. The Asylum Affair as Disturbance
The Hungarian asylum affair disrupts the Berlin–Luxembourg axis at a sensitive point: the assumed unity of the EU’s political security space.
If a member state grants political asylum to a citizen of another, three system-level questions emerge:
Is the EU a safe political space?
If yes, internal asylum is a contradiction in terms.Can a member state act as persecutor?
If yes, the foundational premise of the Union collapses.May the CJEU define persecution inside the EU?
If yes, Luxembourg becomes an arbiter of inner sovereignty.
Thus we enter a definitional moment: the Union must decide whether it is political or merely legal in appearance.
IV. Orbán as Structural Disturbance
Orbán is not impulsive. He probes structural weaknesses:
2015: Schengen,
2018: values regime,
2022: sanctions capability,
2025: internal sovereignty.
Until now Berlin could remain in the shadows. No longer. Either the EU is a single legal and security space, or it exists only as fiction.
V. Possible Strategies for the CJEU
Luxembourg has three strategies:
A — Categorical Neutralisation
Declare the case inadmissible.
Outcome: Orbán wins, EU self-image erodes.
B — Material Primacy
Rule that internal political asylum is impermissible.
Outcome: proto-federal constitutional authority emerges, Berlin wins.
C — Muted Execution
Condemn Hungary with gradual enforcement.
Outcome: buys time — Germany’s preferred option.
Each strategy generates systemic costs. That is new.
Conclusion
The Berlin–Luxembourg axis has been the invisible engine of European integration.
The Hungarian asylum affair lifts the cover.
Berlin defines,
Brussels proceduralises,
Luxembourg executes.
This is post-national hegemony:
power without a state,
reach without armies,
primacy through law.
The asylum affair is not a scandal but a seismograph.
It shows that Europe has reached the point where its architecture of power can no longer hide.
