Hungary’s Orban casts himself as Trump’s favorite European ally

The Hungarian leader’s efforts to capitalize on the moment were on full display this week, ahead of a speech he gave Wednesday in Strasbourg, France, laying out his plans for Hungary’s turn at the presidency of the Council of the European Union.

“We will open several bottles of champagne if Trump is back,” Orban said Tuesday at a nearly two-hour news conference, as he promised to “take over Brussels.”

At the debate at the European Parliament on Wednesday, Orban warned that E.U. competitiveness lags behind the United States and China, pushed for tougher controls on asylum seekers and said he had come to Strasbourg to convince lawmakers that “the European Union needs to change.”

Since Hungary took up the Council of the E.U. presidency in July — with the slogan “Make Europe Great Again” — Orban has backed Trump’s reelection campaign, angered E.U. leaders by visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and boasted about a resurgent right wing across the continent.

Orban “sees this timing as a pivotal moment,” according to Daniel Hegedüs, a regional director at the German Marshall Fund think tank — not least because the U.S. election in November could put a president in the Oval Office who has praised Orban as “fantastic.”

The Hungarian prime minister is trying “to sell himself as an important Trump whisperer, as a crucial interlocutor or liaison for the next U.S. president,” Hegedüs said. “He is trying to still increase his influence or just his visibility in the last moments [before the election] because he knows very well that the result in November is also in some respect a make-or-break moment for him. He bet everything on Trump.”

On the campaign trail, the former U.S. president has praised Orban, who has strong ties to Trump’s political movement. “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban,” Trump — who has often embraced autocratic world leaders — said in March when Orban visited his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Fla.

During last month’s presidential debate with the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump cited support from Orban as the prime example of how much he is respected by world leaders. “Viktor Orban said … ‘the most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president,’” Trump said.

Orban, who prides himself as a proponent of “illiberal democracy,” has made the most of the E.U. stage to signal to his critics as well as like-minded populist firebrands on both sides of the Atlantic that the right is on the ascent, after gains made by far-right parties in recent European elections.

He may also be trying to score political points at home. “It very rarely happens that the Hungarian prime minister really has an influence on a global political stage,” Hegedüs said, “and he tries to sell his message to a domestic audience, that Hungary is really punching above its own weight with Orban.”

If Hungary is playing an outsize role in Europe, it’s largely because Orban has become the E.U.’s disrupter in chief. While Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been touted as an example of how a far-right leader can work from within the establishment, Orban’s brand is to stand in the way, particularly on European support for Ukraine.

Tensions between Budapest and Brussels are simmering at a time when Hungary’s relationship with the United States is also at a low point. Hungary is essentially behind the stalling of a Group of Seven initiative to use proceeds from frozen Russian assets to give Ukraine a $50 billion loan. Washington had sought assurances that could not be guaranteed at the E.U. because they have been held up by Moscow-friendly Hungary.

Orban and the E.U. have been at odds for years, but his moves to hold up aid for Kyiv have become notorious in Brussels, and he has clashed with E.U. officials over refugee policies, a plan to ease visa rules for Russians, charges of misusing E.U. funds and curbs to political rights in Hungary. The Hungarian leader has taunted E.U. allies to the point of threatening to bus migrants to the E.U. headquarters in Brussels.

E.U. officials have struggled to deny Orban a wider platform, refusing to go to Budapest for informal meetings in July as would be customary after Hungary assumed the presidency, following his surprise world trip — with stops in Ukraine and Russia — that he called a “peace mission.” Orban has broken with other E.U. and NATO leaders by calling on Ukraine to consider making concessions to Russia.

In an unusually fiery rebuttal in Parliament on Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the E.U.’s executive branch, lambasted Orban over his close ties to Putin. She went through a tally of grievances with Budapest and called its move to ease visa rules for Russian nationals a “security risk” for all E.U. countries.

The six-month rotating council presidency typically involves shaping the bloc’s agenda and convening meetings. E.U. observers have said the nature of the job limits what Hungary can do, but for some European leaders, the optics were even worse than they had expected — right off the bat.

Orban traveled to Ukraine one day after Hungary assumed the presidency in July. Then he went to Moscow, triggering backlash from E.U. officials who said they had not been informed of the trip. He followed that with a trip to China and later to Mar-a-Lago.

In Strasbourg this week, Orban told reporters that Europe’s approach to the war in Ukraine was “stupid” because “you cannot win on the battlefield.” He said that dialogue was the only way forward and that it would be in European interests for there to be discussions with Russia over a cease-fire.

If elected, Trump would immediately act “to manage a peace” between Ukraine and Russia, “so we don’t have as European leaders any time to waste,” Orban added.

Trump has repeatedly said he could quickly strike a deal with Putin to end the war. Ukrainian officials have expressed skepticism and concern that Trump would advocate for Ukraine to make territorial concessions to Russia in negotiations — which Kyiv has been adamantly against. The Washington Post previously reported that Trump has privately said he could end the war by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territory.

Orban suggested that individual E.U. countries should decide whether to keep providing aid to Ukraine. “Those who think that what we are doing as the European Union is good and strategically right, let’s support the Ukrainians. Those who disagree with that, like Hungary, we don’t! That belongs to the national governments,” he told reporters.

He also used his address Wednesday to press for stricter border controls on people coming into the 27-nation bloc. He called for “hot spots” outside the E.U. to process asylum claims, an idea of outsourcing that has drawn support in some countries but criticism from rights groups.

Beatriz Rios in Strasbourg and David L. Stern in Kyiv contributed to this report.