Ego, Putin or Jets? Reasons for Orbán’s position on Sweden baffle many.
It took 19 months of broken promises and bellicose rhetoric before Hungary finally ratified Sweden’s accession to NATO.
Why all the dragging, many observers wondered, when Hungary would still approve the Nordic country’s membership of the military alliance?
That question has even baffled members of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, said Peter Ungar, an opposition lawmaker. He said that in the run-up to Monday’s vote in Parliament to accept NATO expansion, he was approached by a Fidesz lawmaker and asked: “What the hell is going on with Sweden?”
That a member of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ruling party would seek an explanation from a rival politician shows how surprised even the Hungarian leader’s allies, let alone his opponents, became at their country’s decision to support NATO expansion. slowed down.
“The whole thing is incomprehensible,” said Mr. Ungar, a Hungarian progressive whose mother, Maria Schmidt, is a prominent conservative and longtime ally of Mr. Orban. “No one understands what the problem was,” Mr Ungar added.
He refused to name the MP who had sought him out, saying Fidesz demands unconditional loyalty to and acceptance of Mr Orban’s decisions, no matter how baffling they may seem. (The government did not respond to a request for comment.)
When parliament finally voted on Monday, it gave overwhelming support to Sweden’s membership. Zoltan Kovacs, the Secretary of State for International Communications, called it a ‘historic moment’, noting that “Hungary has a vested interest in the security of Europe” and that Sweden will be “a strong and reliable ally.”
However, Hungary’s reliability is more open to question.
The government submitted Finland and Sweden’s NATO applications to parliament in July 2022, but hesitated to put them to a vote. Finland was accepted by Hungary in March last year, but it took Parliament another eleven months to reach Sweden.
Mr. Orban and government officials offered a host of varying and sometimes far-fetched explanations for the delay, including complaints about references to Hungary in textbooks used in Swedish schools.
Some government critics, such as Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital, a research group critical of Fidesz, blamed Mr. Orban’s ego and his desire, as leader of a small country with little economic or military influence, to be at the center. of attention.
More conspiratorial critics suspected a secret deal between Mr. Orbán and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, pointing to the fact that of the European Union’s 27 national leaders, only Hungary’s has since met and photographed Mr. Putin while shaking hands. the beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
But there is no evidence that Orbán’s close cooperation with Russia is more than an expression of his oft-stated desire to remain on good terms with Moscow, a major energy source, and avoid becoming entangled in the war next door in Ukraine. .
That position, which runs counter to that of fellow European leaders who see support for Ukraine as a moral and security issue, helped Fidesz to a landslide victory, its fourth in a row, in the last Hungarian parliamentary elections in April 2022.
The ego theory may have more basis. Hungary’s stagnation has certainly thrust a spotlight, if mostly unflattering, on Mr Orbán and his country, which has a population of just 10 million and accounts for just 1 percent of the European Union’s economic output.
Alarmed by the long delay, a bipartisan delegation of U.S. senators headed to Budapest, the Hungarian capital, earlier this month to show that Hungary was being taken seriously. Government ministers and Fidesz lawmakers all refused to meet senators, a criticism the government and its media machine celebrated as proof that Hungary makes its own decisions and will not be pressured.
“It is not worth it to visit US senators to exert pressure,” said Hungary’s combative Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.
A warmer welcome was received by Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who traveled to Budapest on Friday to talk down Mr Orban from his defiant one-against-all stance on Sweden’s membership. To help that happen, he brought with him promises of greater military and industrial cooperation between the countries.
Shortly after arriving in Budapest, Saab, a Swedish aviation company, announced that it had signed a contract with the Swedish state for the delivery of four new Gripen fighter jets to Hungary.
Mr Kristersson, who had previously said he would only visit Budapest after Hungary ratified his country’s NATO membership, also brought with him a promise that Saab would open a research center in Hungary.
Perhaps more importantly, however, the Swedish Prime Minister’s visit gave Mr Orbán the satisfaction of having settled an old personal score. While a member of the European Parliament in 2019, Mr Kristersson helped deliver a humiliating blow to Mr Orban by backing calls for Fidesz’s ouster from a powerful bloc of centrist and conservative lawmakers.
To avoid the humiliation of his departure, Fidesz withdrew.
Agoston Mraz, the director of the Nezopont Institute, a research center that conducts opinion polls for the government, said the most important aspect of Mr Kristersson’s visit was not only the extensive military cooperation, but that the Swedish prime minister had to smile for the cameras with Mr Orban.
“He is not a big fan of Mr Orban, but to be accepted into NATO he has to smile,” Mr Mraz said.
Without that, he added, Orban would have had a hard time explaining to his core rural voters why Hungary, after so many months of delays, dropped its objections to Sweden and let the country join NATO join. “It had to be explained and the explanation is that there is a deal with the Swedish prime minister,” he said.
The agreement on military cooperation, which had been in the works for many months, had little to do with Sweden’s membership of the Western alliance and, according to diplomats and analysts, only became linked to the NATO issue so that Mr. Orban could point to a concrete advantage. of his obstructionist policy.
That policy, at least initially, fit a familiar pattern, especially evident in Hungary’s repeated battles with the European Union, of defying mainstream opinion and asserting Hungarian sovereignty. Hungary also blocked a financial aid package for Ukraine for months, but relented under heavy pressure on February 1, a few weeks after the European Union released $10 billion in frozen funding for Hungary.
The government has now defaced the country with billboards featuring a photo of Ursula Von der Leyen, the president of the EU executive in Brussels, calling on citizens to resist external pressure: “Let us not go to dancing their tunes.”
However, as time progressed and Turkey, the only other obstacle blocking Sweden’s membership, ratified the Nordic nation’s admission in January, Hungary’s delays continued despite a pledge from Mr Orbán on January 24 to bring Sweden “to the first possible opportunity”. ” caused increasing confusion, even among some government allies.
When opposition lawmakers called an extraordinary session of parliament on February 5 to finally vote on Sweden’s admission, Fidesz boycotted the session.
Mr Mraz, a Fidesz supporter with ties to its leadership, said the boycott simply reflected Hungary’s domestic political reality. “We live in a polarized democracy and that means the opposition does not decide the date of Sweden’s acceptance,” he said.
But Hungary, he acknowledged, was surprised by the speed with which Turkey, a close economic and political partner, had ratified Sweden’s accession after more than a year of hesitation. “It was not pleasant for Mr Orbán that his promise that Hungary would not be the last could not be kept,” Mr Mraz said.
But in the end, Mr. Orban got what he wanted, including a large portion of humble pie eaten by Mr. Kristersson and a plausible story to tell his supporters.
“The Hungarian way of politics,” Mr. Mraz said, “is to be loud and fight.” Others, especially Scandinavians and EU officials in Brussels committed to seeking consensus, may not like Hungary’s approach. But, Mr. Mraz said, “it works.”