(Bloomberg) -- Spain’s Vox party became the latest far-right group to obtain a loan from a Hungarian bank to finance political campaigns, one of the ways Prime Minister Viktor Orban is building his influence among fellow nationalists in Europe.
Vox received financing from Magyar Bankholding Nyrt., a lender whose ownership is closely aligned with the Hungarian leader, Europa Press reported on Monday, citing people in the Spanish party’s executive it didn’t name. The reported loan was originally valued at €9.2 million ($10.2 million) but a Vox spokeswoman, Pepa Millan, later lowered the amount to €6.5 million, Europa Press said on Tuesday.
The European Union’s longest-serving leader, Orban has become a key political figure among nationalists in Europe and abroad. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump often speaks about the Hungarian prime minister’s strongman-style leadership with admiration.
Orban, who has clashed with the EU over graft and rule-of-law concerns under his rule, also became the driving force behind the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament following June’s elections. It’s now the third-largest in the EU legislature and counts more than a dozen political parties among its members.
One of its leaders is Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which received a more than €10 million loan from MKB Bank Nyrt. to fund her failed presidential bid. MKB is now part of Magyar Bankholding, whose biggest shareholders are a government controlled state investment company and Lorinc Meszaros, one of the prime minister’s closest business allies.
Neither MBH nor Orban’s government replied to Bloomberg questions about the Vox loan. Central European news website VSquare was first to report about it.
The financing of political parties is just one of the ways Orban has sought to support fellow nationalists.
The five-term leader also regularly stumps for far-right candidates in Europe during election campaigns. He’s also endorsed Trump ahead of his bid to return to the White House after the November 5 ballot.
The Mathias Corvinus Collegium, or MCC, an educational foundation that Hungary’s government endowed with $1 billion, also doubles as an entity for Orban’s soft power. It holds conferences and has several centers including one in Brussels. Earlier this year MCC organized a farmers’ protest to rail against what it described as a European elite out-of-touch with their concerns.
All of these efforts to influence political developments stand in contrast to Orban’s illiberal regime back home, where the premier this year set up a Sovereignty Protection Agency to shield Hungary from potential interference from abroad.
Its director, Tamas Lanczi, told Bloomberg in February that his agency would target US influence rather than that of China or Russia. Orban has deepened cooperation with these two countries in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine even as Western allies in the EU and NATO pared them. The agency has since targeted journalists as well as anti-corruption and environmental groups.
--With assistance from Marton Kasnyik and Alberto Nardelli.
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