For Orban, Ukraine is a pawn in a longer game
After months of backlash against financial aid to Ukraine, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban bowed to intense pressure from his fellow European leaders on Thursday, but not before trying to change the subject in Brussels by meeting angry Belgian farmers next to a convoy of tractors and express support for the protests roiling Europe.
In what amounted to a campaign stop ahead of June's European elections that he hopes will shift the European balance of power in his direction, Mr Orban on Wednesday evening skipped a dinner with European leaders and went to talk to farmers outside the European Union had gathered. Location in Brussels for Thursday's make-or-break summit on Ukraine.
“We must find new leaders who truly represent the interests of the people,” Mr Orban told the farmers, leaving little doubt that he is involving himself in what he sees as an inevitable changing of the guard Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union. Union.
For Mr Orbán, whether to send billions of dollars to Ukraine has never been a matter of unwavering principles. the help. Rather, it is just one of many issues on which he has sought to position himself as the leader of a pan-European movement to defend national sovereignty and traditional values against what he disdains as out-of-reach urban elites.
Thursday morning headlines in Hungarian news media loyal to Orbán's government hinted that his main goal has always been to position himself as a beacon for Europeans dissatisfied with the status quo and looking for a leader who is willing to disrupt mainstream opinion.
“Hungary is leading the way,” trumpeted Mandiner, a pro-government weekly and online news site. “All eyes are on Viktor Orban again,” said Index, an online news portal that used to be independent but is now firmly on the government's side after being taken over by a loyal tycoon.
However, it is far from clear whether Mr Orban can convince Europeans to join his populist quest, which has been much more successful and has received fervent support in the United States, where Donald J. Trump is a big fan, then in Europe. Budapest, the Hungarian capital, which officials there have declared the “capital of the anti-woke resistance,” will host American supporters and far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders at a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee in April.
“European politics is not about kicking down the door and shouting,” said Zsombor Zeold, a former Hungarian diplomat and foreign policy expert in Budapest. “It's about building coalitions and reaching compromises.”
Driven by what Poland's new Prime Minister Donald Tusk described early Thursday as “the very strange and selfish game of Viktor Orban”, Hungary has also put itself at the forefront, largely accompanied by booing and jeering, by expanding NATO to block. It is the last country to hold out for Sweden's accession, although Mr Orbán insists his country will eventually give its consent.
Poland's general elections in October, which ousted nationalist forces closely aligned with Orbán, and strong support for Ukraine by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's deeply conservative Italian government have left Hungary more isolated than ever.
But Mr Orban, who has described Hungary as a “nation the size of David rising against an awakened Goliath,” is playing the long game, confident that Mr Trump will win the November elections and that European public opinion will too his opinion changes. amid growing concerns about illegal immigration and the rising cost of living.
Frontex, the European Union's border agency, reported this week that the number of “irregular border crossings” into Europe rose to 380,000 last year, a 17 percent increase from 2022 and the highest level since 2016.
Unlike the Eurosceptics in Britain who waged a successful campaign to take their country out of the European Union in 2016, Mr Orban, who has his eyes firmly on this summer's European Parliament elections, does not want to leave Europe, but leading the European Union. It.
“My plan is not to leave,” he said in December, “but to take over Brussels.”
To that end, he has navigated a wide range of issues that will not only help cement his unassailable grip on Hungary — his Fidesz party has won four resounding election victories in a row — but also cement his image abroad as a leader who dares to rock the boat. to abandon the boat and give voice to views that other politicians, dismissed by Mr Orbán as “woke globalists”, are too timid or too tied to special interests to express.
Speaking in Budapest on the eve of the Brussels summit, Orbán's chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, said that “Hungary is not alone” in its doubts about the wisdom of sending money to Ukraine, but rather “is the strongest in saying that war is not the solution.” Europe, he added, needs “a change of tone,” an adjustment he predicted will take place once European Parliament elections show strong popular support for no-nonsense Hungarian politics.
The European Parliament is largely a support group that attracts little interest outside Brussels. But the elections before that serve as a barometer of public opinion in the 27 member states, and they could increase the influence of right-wing forces that share Orbán's nationalist views.
Mr Orban's meeting with disadvantaged farmers in Brussels brought together several potentially vote-winning themes: that bureaucrats in Brussels are giving short shrift to the interests of ordinary working people and, the prime minister said, that they should “represent the interests of European farmers against that of Ukraine, and not the other way around.”
Mr Orbán made no mention of the increase in costs due to inflation, one of the main complaints of farmers. At more than 17 percent, Hungary had the highest inflation rate in the European Union last year.
Ahead of Hungary's general elections in April 2022, Mr Orban and his party initially focused on denouncing “gender madness”, claiming the European Union wanted to indoctrinate children into becoming transgender. The country largely abandoned that line of attack after Russia invaded Ukraine, focusing instead on accusing the opposition of wanting to send Hungarian men to fight Russia. That wasn't true, but it created a deep sense of unease across Europe about being drawn into a war with Russia.
It resonated strongly with voters in Hungary's neighboring country Slovakia, which in September elected a new government that is deeply skeptical about helping Ukraine. But it has also been present in other countries where hostility toward Ukraine, on both sides of the political spectrum, has also become a sign of political loyalty and defiance of mainstream opinion.
One position that has remained constant for Mr Orban – and is politically very useful, both at home and abroad – is opposition to immigration. That's been a perennial phenomenon since Europe's migrant crisis in 2015, when Hungary took the lead in calling for stricter border controls, a position now embraced in most European capitals.
Orbán's abrupt withdrawal on Thursday from his tough stance against the approval of a €50 billion aid package for Ukraine caused delight and also surprise in Brussels, as he had used his veto to block the money in December and has repeatedly said since he would never submit to 'blackmail'.
Domestically, however, shifting gears carries no risk, where Orbán's grip on the Hungarian news media allows him to present everything that happens as a victory. He faced no backlash in Hungary, for example, when he agreed to multiple rounds of EU sanctions on Moscow despite insisting he would block efforts to punish Russia for its massive invasion of Ukraine.
Mandiner, the pro-government media outlet, admitted on Thursday that the summit had ended “unexpectedly quickly” with an agreement, but said this was because “the heads of government of the member states opened themselves up to Hungary's compromise proposal.” However, European leaders insisted they had stood by their position and rejected a demand by Hungary to have aid to Ukraine reviewed annually by its leaders, which would give Mr Orbán the chance to loosen the aid each year.
Mr. Tusk, the Polish prime minister, whose country stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Hungary for years under the nationalist government ousted by voters in October, rejected the idea that Europe is suffering from “Ukraine fatigue.”
But he added: “We certainly have Orbán fatigue in Brussels now.”
Barnabas Heincz contributed reporting from Budapest.