Is it a bluff? Some in Hungary and Poland talk of EU pullout

Budapest, Hungary: When Hungary and Poland joined the European Union in 2004, after decades of Communist domination, their citizens thirsted for Western democratic standards and prosperity.

Yet 17 years later, as the EU ramps up efforts to rein in democratic backsliding in both countries, some of the governing right-wing populists in Hungary and Poland are comparing the bloc to their former Soviet oppressors - and flirting with the prospect of exiting the trade bloc.

"Brussels sends us overlords who are supposed to bring Poland to order, on our knees," a leading member of Poland's governing Law and Justice party, Marek Suski, said this month, adding that Poland "will fight the Brussels occupier” as it fought past Nazi and Soviet occupiers.