AP
—
The real threat facing Hungary is not Russia but the European Union, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in a speech to supporters on Saturday, as the country’s nationalist parties intensified their anti-EU campaign ahead of national elections.
With just eight weeks until the April 12 vote, Prime Minister Orbán and his Fidesz party face their most serious challenge since the right-wing populist leader took power in 2010.
Most independent polls show Fidesz lagging behind the center-right Tisza party and its leader Péter Magyar, even though Orbán campaigned on the baseless premise that the EU would send Hungarians to their deaths in neighboring Ukraine if the party lost.
In a speech on Saturday, Prime Minister Orbán likened the EU to the repressive Soviet regime that ruled Hungary for more than four decades of the last century, dismissing the idea among many European leaders that Russian President Vladimir Putin poses a threat to the continent’s security.
“Freedom lovers must get used to the idea that they should fear Brussels and not the East,” he said, referring to the EU’s de facto capital in Belgium.
“Fear-mongering about President Putin is primitive and disingenuous. But Brussels is a clear reality and a source of imminent danger,” he said. “This is a bitter truth and we will not tolerate it.”
President Orban has staunchly opposed military and financial aid to Kiev since Russia launched a full-scale invasion nearly four years ago, and has taken a combative stance against Hungary’s EU and NATO partners while maintaining close ties with Russia.
He said in December that when tens of thousands of Russian troops poured across Ukraine’s border in February 2022, “we don’t know who attacked whom.”
Hungary’s government has been at loggerheads with the EU for years, which has frozen billions of euros in funding to Budapest over concerns that Mr. Orbán is dismantling democratic institutions, eroding judicial independence and overseeing widespread official corruption. In return, Prime Minister Orban has increasingly played the role of spoiler in EU decision-making, routinely threatening to veto key policies such as financial aid to Ukraine.
As elections approach, he increasingly portrays his party as a puppet created by the EU to overthrow governments and serve foreign interests, a charge he flatly denies. Party leader Magyar has vowed to mend Hungary’s strained relations with its Western allies, revive its flagging economy and put the country back on a more democratic path.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Saturday accused multinational corporations, including banks and energy companies, of profiting from the Ukraine war and colluding with opposition forces to defeat him in the election.
“It is clear that in Hungary the oil industry, the banking community and the Brussels elite are preparing to form a government,” he said. “Hungary needs someone who will never say no to Brussels’ demands.”
Prime Minister Orbán has vowed that if his party wins a fifth consecutive majority in elections, it will continue its goal of ridding Hungary of groups it claims violate its sovereignty.
He credited US President Donald Trump, who supported him ahead of the election, for creating an environment in which he could oust “fake non-governmental organizations and bribed and paid journalists, judges and politicians.”
“Our chances have increased because America’s new president has rebelled against global business, media and liberal political networks,” he said. “We can also take major steps to rid Hungary and its proxies of foreign influences that limit our sovereignty.”
“The Brussels repression apparatus is still operating in Hungary. We will wipe it out from April onwards,” he said.
