The Hungarian Prime Minister said during a speech in Budapest that the EU's leaders are driving it into isolation. He also declared that the new US president and the EU's right-wing faction will dominate politics in the future.
ADVERTISEMENT
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that Europe has become isolated from all the important players in the new world order, including the new US leadership, Russia, China and Africa.
Following the election of US President Donald Trump, however, and with the rise of the Patriots for Europe - a right-wing faction in the European Parliament - Orbán said he expects these forces to join and conduct a "reconstruction of the Western world."
He made the remarks at a conference titled "Successful Hungarian Presidency 2024 - A Chance for the European Union," organised by the 21st Century Institute and the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest.
Referring to Hungary's EU presidency during the second half of last year as a new era, the Hungarian PM also accused EU leaders of leading the bloc into isolation, adding that “if all goes unchanged, the EU could become an absolute loser in the new world order... we don't want to be losers, thank you."
Hungary’s term as the EU presidency was launched with a campaign titled "Make Europe Great Again”, a slight variation of former and incoming US President Donald Trump’s infamous “Make America Great Again”, or MAGA, slogan.
Orbán began the presidency with a highly criticised visit to Moscow, where he met Russian President Vladimir Putin, in what he called a “peace mission”. The visit drew widespread criticism, as the European Parliament strongly condemned the meeting in a resolution. The EU Parliament labelled the visit a “blatant violation of the EU’s treaties and common foreign policy”, and pushed for repercussions against the Hungarian leader. Orbán also came under fire for meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, once again, during his country’s rotating presidency of the bloc.
Declaring his admiration for the incoming US President Donald Trump in his speech, he said that "the Western world has a patriotic, pro-peace, pro-family, anti-migration and pro-family president" in Washington, and that "in just a few hours the sun will shine differently over Brussels."
Viktor Orbán spoke of "a new president in America, a large patriotic faction in Brussels, great enthusiasm, patriots who are tried and tested and love their country," adding that "the sick man of Europe today is the European Union".
The symptoms are well known, he said, "because the EU cannot guarantee the peace and security of Europe and its immediate neighbourhood or Europe's prosperity, it cannot stop illegal migration, it cannot give a perspective to agriculture, and Ukrainian membership of the EU would destroy EU farmers."
The Hungarian PM insisted that "bureaucrats in Brussels" cannot be convinced of this, and that "while the EU is accumulating failure after failure, the Brussels institutions are constantly getting stronger and seek to obtain more powers."
In his words, “in Brussels they do not think that the EU is sick at all. They think the EU is working as it should, while the objective of European integration is integration itself - building a bureaucracy ruling over the nation states.”
Many countries in the EU started distancing from Hungary during the presidency, boycotting EU meetings organised by Budapest, including the European Commission. Many leaders felt Orbán’s policies and views did not represent the rest of the bloc, nor advance its interests or common goals.
Orbán has frequently clashed with Brussels, which has withheld billions in financial support from Hungary over its alleged breaches of rule-of-law and democracy standards.
Orbán stressed that change is needed in order to "heal" the European Union, and that this can be achieved "through political means, from outside and through conflict with Brussels," or even using instruments within the EU. "We, Hungary, are in fact the opponents of the Brussels system."
Brussels, he said, was "under occupation by an oligarchy coordinated by the left-liberal and trans-Atlantic elite," that is federal rather than based on the sovereignty of nation states.
Finally, Orbán accused Budapest-born American billionaire investor George Soros of financing a "united liberal front" that is attacking sovereigntists and patriots because, according to him, of their insistence that the rule of law and the fight against corruption should apply to Brussels.
This article has been updated with context related to the Hungarian EU presidency