The Prime Minister of Hungary, the ultra-conservative Viktor Orbán, sees 2024 as a good time to achieve his goals, which go beyond national politics and look towards greater international influence through the exporting a model that, according to him, other countries should also apply.
The 60-year-old pro-Russian ultra-nationalist leader maintains that his positions on migration, Ukraine’s entry into the European Union (EU) or relations with Russia are appropriate in the current historical context and hopes that the European elections in June a conjunction of populist right-wing forces emerges that redefines the new Europe that he projects and desires. Viktor Orbán has been at the head of the Central European country for thirteen years, after a first mandate in the period 1998-2002.
In his annual press conference with foreign media on Thursday in Budapest – the fifth since he started this tradition – Orbán accused the EU of blackmailing Hungary and stated that in Brussels “things are going in a direction unbearably bad”. He then announced that his party, Fidesz, is negotiating with the European parliamentary group Conservatives and Reformists – which leads the party of Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – for possible cooperation after the June elections. Fidesz was part of the European People’s Party (EPP), and left it in 2020 to avoid expulsion.
Orbán assured that, beyond Fidesz’s dealings with one or another European parliamentary group, “we must not lose sight of the great strategic objective”, that is to say, that “the centre-right stops following the policies of the “left and join the right, which is getting stronger”. Indeed, despite the defeat in Poland – where the coalition of the centrist Donald Tusk has ousted the ultra-conservatives from power -, the ultra-right or the populist right govern, condition the government or have had electoral victories in Italy, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands, and they are trading up in Germany, Austria and France. The free verse of the prime minister of Slovakia, the populist and pro-Russian social democrat Robert Fico, fits with them.
According to the Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev, who observes how few of the particularities of the European countries of the former Soviet sphere, those who think that Orbán acts only as a blackmailer who, in order to obtain economic rewards, uses the veto in affairs that Brussels… considers them keys. Last week, the EU unblocked some of the funds destined for Hungary that it had withheld due to the erosion of the rule of law, as it considered that Budapest had already resolved aspects of its reform of the judicial system. But another 20,000 million euros remain frozen.
“European leaders are now misunderstanding Orbán in the same way they misunderstood Vladimir Putin in 2022 – Krastev warned the Financial Times about last week’s European summit. They assumed that Orbán’s tough positions were basically a bargaining strategy, a way to extract more money from Brussels. However, this time the central issue was not money, it was the future profile of the EU”.
On Thursday in Budapest, Orbán defended the postulates that lead him to collide with the EU, a club he officially detests but has absolutely no intention of leaving – the disastrous consequences of Brexit for the United Kingdom have been a great lesson for Europhobes – , but transform to its size.
The Hungarian leader charged against the new EU migration pact, achieved by a qualified majority, which tightens the conditions but, in his opinion, not enough. Orbán defended the Hungarian model: “No other solution could have results”. Hungary applies a very restrictive immigration policy. The borders are closed with fences and asylum applications must be submitted to their embassies in neighboring non-EU countries, i.e. Ukraine and Serbia. With the war, the only realistic option is Belgrade, and very few requests are received.
Ukraine is another fixed issue on his agenda. The EU countries, with the exception of Hungary, agreed last week to open accession talks with Ukraine. Orbán’s no to an agreement that required unanimity was resolved because, at the behest of the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the Hungarian absented himself from the room. But it was not possible to convince him to renew the EU budget to send 50 billion euros to Kyiv, a matter that was postponed to a special summit to be held on February 1.
Viktor Orbán, the only European leader who has interviewed Putin since the international arrest warrant was issued for alleged war crimes in Ukraine – they were seen in Beijing in October – even questions the use of the word war for aggression in Ukraine. “It is a military operation. There was no declaration of war between the two countries. When Russia declares war, there will be war – he argued in Budapest -. We should be glad that there is no declaration of war because then there would be a general mobilization in Russia; I don’t wish it on anyone.”