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Louise Thomas
Editor
Hungary’s nationalist prime minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday that the European Union is sliding toward oblivion. It came in a rambling anti-Western speech in which he warned of a new, Asia-oriented “world order”, and expressed support for Donald Trump’s presidential bid.
“Europe has given up defending its own interests,” Mr Orban said as he spoke in Baile Tusnad, a majority ethnic Hungarian town in central Romania. “All Europe is doing today is following the US’s pro-Democrat foreign policy unconditionally … even at the cost of self-destruction.
“A change is coming that has not been seen for 500 years. What we are facing is in fact a world order change,” he added, saying China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia were becoming the “dominant centre” of the world.
Mr Orban also alleged that the US was behind the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines built to carry gas from Russia to Germany, calling it “an act of terrorism carried out at the obvious direction of the Americans”. He didn’t offer any evidence to back up the claim.
The far-right leader’s remarks come amid growing criticism from his European partners after he embarked on rogue “peace mission” trips to Moscow and Beijing earlier this month, aimed at brokering an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Mr Orban is widely considered to have the warmest relations with the Kremlin of all EU leaders.
On Ukraine, Mr Orban cast doubt on the war-torn country becoming either a member of NATO or the EU. “We Europeans do not have the money for it. Ukraine will revert to the position of a buffer state,” he said, adding that international security guarantees “will be enshrined in an agreement between the US and Russia”.
Throughout Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Mr Orban has broken with other EU leaders by refusing to provide Kyiv with weapons to defend against Russian forces and has routinely delayed, watered down, or blocked efforts to send financial aid to Kyiv and impose sanctions on Moscow.
Mr Orban typically uses the annual Tusvanyos Summer University platform in Romania to indicate the ideological direction of his national government and to deride the standards of the EU bloc, which Hungary joined in 2004.
Hungary currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, during which Mr Orban has made a Trumpian vow to “Make Europe Great Again” and has openly endorsed Mr Trump’s candidacy in this year’s US presidential election. Mr Orban has visited Mr Trump twice this year at the former president’s beachside compound in Mar-a-Lago.
Mr Orban said on Saturday that Mr Trump’s bid for re-election aims “to pull the American people back from a post-nationalist liberal state to a nation state” and rehashed a slew of conservative tropes that Mr Trump is being penalised unfairly to hamper his electoral bid.
“That is why they want to put him in prison. That’s why they want to take away his assets. And if that doesn’t work, that’s why they want to kill him,” Mr Orban said, referring to an assassination attempt on Mr Trump at a Pennsylvania rally this month.
Mr Orban’s remarks on Saturday aren’t the first time he’s used the festival in Transylvania to stir controversy. In 2014, Mr Orban declared for the first time his intentions of building an “illiberal state” in Hungary, and in 2022, he sparked international outrage after he railed against Europe becoming a “mixed race” society. He doubled down on his long-held anti-immigration stance on Saturday, saying it is not an answer to his country’s ageing population.
“There can be no question of a shrinking population supplemented by migration,” he said in his Saturday address. “The Western experience is that if there are more guests than owners, then home is no longer home. This is a risk that should not be taken.”
The EU’s longest-serving leader, Mr Orban has become an icon to some conservative populists for his firm opposition to immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. He has also cracked down on the press and judiciary in Hungary and been accused by the EU of violating rule-of-law and democracy standards.
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McGrath reported from Sighisoara, Romania.
