The Hungarian EU presidency starting at the beginning of July has been diverted, some would say hijacked, from the agenda of the Union to the international agenda of a member-state. It was launched not in Brussels, as is usually the case, but in Kyiv, where Viktor Orbán met with President Zelensky and started his self-proclaimed international “peace mission” which took him within ten days to Moscow for talks with Vladimir Putin, then to Beijing to meet President Xi, concluding his world tour at the NATO summit in Washington and at Mar-a-Lago in Florida with Donald Trump.
Forget the dull European agenda with its Green Deal and the deepening of the single market; this is about ‘world peace’ with Orbán’s Hungary, clearly boxing above its weight, using the rotating EU presidency to promote himself and his priorities without any EU mandate as he was promptly reminded by Josep Borrell, in charge of coordinating EU foreign policy. Indeed, this Hungarian presidency will most clearly be at odds with the EU consensus on several major foreign policy issues, most importantly on relations with Russia and EU enlargement to Ukraine, but also with China – a crucial ally of Russia – and the US in the midst of Trump’s bid for the presidency.
Orbán’s “peace tour” cearly undermines the capacity to formulate a European policy on Russia and the need for strong support for Ukraine. Imagine the dialogue at the EU Council between the ‘appeasing’ Hungarian PM and the newly appointed EU High Representative for foreign policy, a staunch opponent of Russian imperialism, Estonian PM Kaja Kallas. Orban threatened to use his veto power at the December 2023 European Council meeting to unblock €10bn of EU funds (leaving the session for a five-minute coffee break). This is transactional politics or “cakism” — have your cake and eat it — at its crudest. But it has, so far, worked for Orban. His international use of the EU presidency has been made possible by a lull in Brussels due to the transition between the departing Commission and the new one in the process of being appointed, but also by the weakening of the positions of France and Germany in the aftermath of the European elections (followed in France by parliamentary elections with the strong showing of Marine Le Pen’s RN, an ally of Viktor Orban).
How to read Hungary’s Ostpolitik? From the start of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, Hungary has been dragging its feet on sanctions against Russia and support for Ukraine at war. Orbán’s first visit to Kyiv on July 2 to meet President Zelensky was meant to explore the “possibilities of achieving peace” while listing a series of Hungarian demands concerning the improvement of the protection of minorities (Hungarian in particular) as a condition for a possible rapprochement between Kyiv and the EU.
The major underlying argument is the following: Orbán, a would-be adept of Realpolitik, considers that Ukraine cannot win the war against Russia and that it is therefore necessary to bring the conflict to an end, at least to reach a ceasefire, with presumably the acceptance by Kyiv of some territorial losses. Orbán’s position clearly plays into Putin’s hand though it is not (as often portrayed) a simply “pro-Russian” one. Neither he, who in June 1989 famously demanded in Budapest the departure of Russian troops, nor Hungarians in general, are “Russophiles”. They remember their history: 1848-1949 and 1956, on two occasions Russians “restored order” in Budapest after an aborted democratic revolution. But Orbán has deliberately tapped into a widespread feeling in society (“let’s stay away” from this conflict, “it’s not our war”) and, at the same time, benefited from the economic advantages to be gained from his open indulgence of Putin (cheap supplies of oil and gas). The relationship with Putin is based on proclaimed “realism” (in the coming years “Europe will have to find a modus vivendi with Russia”) but also on Orbán’s affinity with his kleptocratic regime and fellow authoritarian nationalist rulers who include Erdogan, Netanyahu, and Trump.
Another dimension is revived resentment against Western Europe. It goes back to the 1920 Trianon trauma (when Hungary lost two thirds of its territory and a third of its population in the name of Western support for ‘national self-determination’). Orbán’s speech on March 15, the annual commemoration of the 1848 revolution, quoted Sandor Petöfy’s poem “Shall we be slaves or free”, which refers to Hungarian resistance to empires, Ottoman, Habsburg, Soviet, and now to the EU/Brussels, portrayed as a new form of imperial domination. But it fails to mention Russia’s war of aggression next door. Hungary’s ‘anticolonial’ posture is now part of a revised national narrative, yet it refuses such a framing for Ukraine’s resistance to annexation.
Hungary claims to be in favor of EU enlargement eastward, but not to Ukraine. The promise of EU membership, made under the French presidency in June 2022, was meant as a political and symbolic gesture of support for a country under assault. Such talks are deemed “premature” for Orbán; besides Hungarian farmers would lose out, and “cohesion funds” for Ukraine would come “at the expense of Hungarians”, Orbán said last December. He favors instead an enlargement to the Balkans which for him means Serbia, where his alter ego, President Vučić, is practicing a similar brand of ‘illiberal democracy’. The EU project of enlargement to the East arose twenty years ago and remains based on the consolidation of democracy; for Orbán it is meant as the reinforcement of the nationalist “illiberals” inside the EU.
Orbán’s ‘peace tour’ concluded with a transatlantic dimension in the United States at the Washington NATO summit on the occasion of the Alliance’s 75th anniversary. There he received a cold reception from fellow Europeans and the American hosts and had to listen to guest speaker Zelensky’s speech reminding the audience that ”all leaders are not entitled to conduct negotiations. For that you must have a certain power.” Orbán knows well the limits of his power. In a manner reminiscent of his behavior on the EU sanctions vis-à-vis Russia, he criticised some of NATO’s policies toward the Ukrainian conflict without actually opposing measures of support for Ukraine adopted at the summit.
The gist of Orbán’s reservations was spelled out by his Foreign minister, Peter Sijarto, who (on July 12, 2024) described NATO’s policy on Ukraine as a failure and accused the allies of double standards: In the Middle East conflict the West encourages Israel to negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas but in the Ukrainian case it closes the door to negotiations. Similarly, Sijarto added, the EU pressures Hungary to cut its cooperation with Russia for the construction of a nuclear plant while the US is increasing its cooperation with Russia for the treatment of uranium.
Last but not least: After the NATO summit chaired by President Biden came Orbán’s visit to Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Orbán was an early admirer (“Brexit opened the door, with Trump we crossed the threshold. The liberal non-democracy is over. What a day! What a day! What a day!,” the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying the day after Trump’s election in November 2016) and over the years he has developed a relationship with the former and possibly future American president.
“Over there MAGA, over here MEGA,” Orbáns’ presidency motto “Make Europe great again,” is a deliberate echo of Trump’s American version. His “Trumpism” for Europe is presented as an investment in a Hungarian version, a ‘special relationship” with the US. The rest of Europe shudders, Ukrainians have good reasons to fear his return to the White House (more likely as Biden disintegrates live on TV) as he claims to fix the Ukrainian war (with Putin, who else?) in 24 hours. Trump’s advisers have suggested that future aid to Ukraine should be conditioned by its will to take part in a negotiated deal with Russia (including territorial losses and neutrality status). His choice for vice-president, James D. Vance supports this view.
And so does Viktor Orbán as he clearly tries to position himself as a European link between Putin and Trump. To enhance his role internationally and in the EU he has just launched the Patriots of Europe, a motley gathering of nationalist-populist parties ranging from Marine Le Pen’s RN to Geert Wilders in Holland and Central European neighbors such as Robert Fico in Slovakia or Andrej Babis in the Czech Republic who just won the European election and is in a strong position to become the Czech Republic’s next prime minister. All these parties have share a sovereignist approach to EU integration and, importantly in today’s situation, an “accommodating” position vis-à-vis Russia’s war or, if you prefer, the “peace camp” inside the EU. That is where Orbán’s international “peace mission” connects with his internal agenda for the European Union.
Jacques Rupnik is a Central and Eastern Europe specialist, an emeritus research director at Sciences Po, with degrees in history from the Sorbonne, political science from Sciences Po, Russian from INALCO, Soviet studies from Harvard University, and a PhD in the history of international relations from Paris 1 University.
