A German court has done what many thought impossible: extradited an activist to Viktor Orbán's Hungary, a country whose judicial independence the European Union has spent years questioning. Now Maja T. sits in a Budapest prison, and Brussels faces an existential question about its own legal architecture.

The case is a scandal, Die Zeit reports, because it exposes the collision between two fundamental EU principles: judicial cooperation and the rule of law.

The European Arrest Warrant - the system that allows EU member states to extradite suspects to each other with minimal bureaucracy - was supposed to be a triumph of integration. No more lengthy extradition hearings. No more diplomatic wrangling. Just one judge in Munich or Madrid trusting another judge in Warsaw or Paris.

But what happens when you can't trust the courts in the destination country?

Maja T., a left-wing activist, was wanted by Hungarian authorities on charges related to protests in Budapest. German courts approved the extradition under the European Arrest Warrant system. She was handed over. She is now in Hungarian custody.

The problem: Hungary has been under EU rule-of-law proceedings since 2022. The European Commission has frozen €13 billion in EU funds over concerns about judicial independence, corruption, and media freedom. The European Court of Justice has ruled that Hungary's courts cannot be presumed independent.

And yet German judges sent Maja T. there anyway.

The legal reasoning is grimly bureaucratic: the European Arrest Warrant is binding EU law. Hungarian courts are, on paper, EU courts. Therefore, German courts have no choice but to comply.

But that logic creates an impossible paradox. If Hungarian courts aren't independent - if they're subject to political pressure from Orbán's government - then sending someone to face Hungarian justice isn't judicial cooperation, it's political extradition.

This isn't theoretical. Hungary's prosecutors have a documented history of bringing politically motivated charges against opposition figures, NGO workers, and journalists. The country's chief prosecutor is appointed by Orbán's parliamentary majority and cannot be removed. The Constitutional Court is stacked with Fidesz loyalists.

German legal scholars are asking: why did the courts cooperate with a system Brussels itself doesn't trust?

The answer lies in the fragmented nature of EU rule-of-law enforcement. The European Commission can freeze funds. The European Court of Justice can issue rulings. But member state courts operate independently. A German judge can't simply declare Hungarian courts illegitimate without creating a constitutional crisis.

The European Arrest Warrant allows refusals on human rights grounds - if there's a "real risk" of torture or inhuman treatment. But the bar is high. German courts concluded that Maja T. wouldn't face physical abuse in Hungarian prison, so the extradition proceeded.

That misses the point. The risk isn't prison conditions, it's a politically compromised trial.

This matters far beyond one activist's case. The European Arrest Warrant processes over 17,000 requests per year. It's the backbone of EU criminal justice cooperation. If courts start refusing Hungarian or Polish warrants on rule-of-law grounds, the entire system fragments.

But if they don't refuse, the EU becomes complicit in judicial systems it officially condemns.

Some member states have already begun threading this needle. Ireland and the Netherlands have refused extraditions to Poland (before its recent government change) citing rule-of-law concerns. The European Court of Justice has ruled that national courts can refuse extraditions if there's a "real risk" of rights violations due to systemic deficiencies.

Germany, historically cautious about challenging EU legal obligations, chose not to take that route with Maja T. The result is a legal scandal that weakens both the European Arrest Warrant and the EU's rule-of-law conditionality.

Orbán can now claim that even Germany - Europe's moral authority on rule-of-law issues - recognizes Hungarian courts as legitimate. Brussels' rule-of-law proceedings look hypocritical if member states keep cooperating judicially with the countries under investigation.

The European Commission has been carefully silent. A spokesperson said only that "member states must ensure all EU law is applied in compliance with fundamental rights." Translation: this is a mess, and we're not touching it.

The case exposes the EU's deepest structural problem: it has rules but limited enforcement. It can criticize Hungary's courts but can't shut them out of the European Arrest Warrant system. It can freeze funds but can't force judicial reform. It can issue rulings but can't compel compliance.

Orbán has exploited this gap for 14 years. He takes EU money, ignores EU rules, and dares Brussels to do something about it. When Brussels does - freezing funds, launching infringement proceedings - he claims victimhood and blames Brussels for anti-Hungarian bias.

Now German courts have handed him validation.

For London, this is a reminder of why post-Brexit judicial cooperation negotiations were so fraught. The UK refused to accept automatic European Arrest Warrant compliance, insisting on case-by-case review. Brussels called that cherry-picking. This case suggests the UK had a point.

For Lagos or Los Angeles, the question is whether the EU's grand project of integrated justice can survive when some member states don't share its values. America's federal system works because all states accept constitutional principles. Europe's system requires 27 countries to trust each other's courts. When that trust breaks, so does the system.

The European Court of Justice will likely rule on this case eventually. It may develop clearer standards for when national courts can refuse extraditions on rule-of-law grounds. It may force member states to choose between judicial cooperation with Hungary or rule-of-law credibility.

But by then Maja T. will have faced Hungarian justice. And the damage to the EU's legal architecture will be done.

Brussels decides more than you think - but when Brussels' own legal systems contradict each other, it's the individual caught in the middle who pays.