(Bloomberg) -- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban offered a vision of a new world order, with backing from China and Donald Trump’s potential return to the White House amplifying his role as a renegade within the European Union. He even teased options outside the bloc.
Addressing supporters at an annual retreat in Baile Tusnad in central Romania on Saturday, Orban touched on familiar tropes about a weak EU core favoring LGBTQ rights and immigration. He compared it with Vladimir Putin’s “rational,” strongly led Russia, an ascendant Asia, and nation states on the EU’s own eastern flank pursuing independent policies.
Orban, 61, has reveled in his role as a disruptor in Europe, at one point holding up the bloc’s budget, blocking aid for Ukraine and regularly suggesting life outside the EU might be better. Brussels is still withholding money from Hungary, accusing its government of corruption and cronyism.
“I don’t think we’ll get a political and economic offer from the US that will give us better opportunities than EU membership,” Orban said. “If we were to get such an offer, we’d have to consider it.”
Orban described Trump as a role model for aiming to bring the US back from a liberal order toward a nation state.
“That’s why there is so much at stake in the American elections,” Orban said. “That’s why they want to imprison him, that’s why they take away his property and tried to kill him, perhaps not for the last time in this campaign.”
At the same time, it’s in China’s interest to keep Hungary within the EU, Orban added. The prime minister referenced President Xi Jinping’s visit to Budapest in May, which helped strengthen Hungary’s role as an access point to the European market for Chinese electric vehicle and battery makers. Hungary also recently took a €1 billion ($1.1 billion) loan from China to finance infrastructure development.
EU Presidency
All in all, Orban came down in favor of keeping Hungary as a center for nationalist policies within the EU for now. “We are able to defend our status as a nation state” in the EU, he said.
David Pressman, the US ambassador to Budapest, who’s been critical of Orban for taking sides in the American election campaign, berated him for channeling Russian talking points in Saturday’s speech.
“Fresh from his meeting with Putin, Prime Minister Orban also peddled Kremlin conspiracy theories about the United States,” Pressman said in a post on X. “Hardly what we expect from an Ally.”
Orban has a history of using the Transylvanian summer event to announce controversial nationalist policies in what was part of Hungary until World War I, often fueling tension with neighbors.
This year’s speech came at an especially fraught time, with Hungary’s stint in the EU’s rotating presidency off to a rocky start in its first month. Orban started his half-year term at the bloc’s helm with a whirlwind tour, stopping in Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in early July, upsetting EU and NATO allies who said he wasn’t authorized to negotiate on their behalf.
Orban’s push for a truce in Ukraine has also further antagonized the government in Kyiv, with implications for Hungary’s struggling economy amid a dispute on crucial Russian oil shipments via Ukraine.
In last year’s speech in Baile Tusnad, Orban taunted Romania with quips over its territorial integrity, touching on a raw nerve over Transylvania. The EU and NATO member countries have a history of tension over the more than 1 million ethnic Hungarians who live in Romania.
This year’s event came a day after Orban met in Bucharest with Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. In his speech, Orban struck a friendlier tone toward the neighboring country, advocating stronger ties including a faster rail link between the nations’ capitals.
--With assistance from Piotr Skolimowski.
(Updates with reaction from US ambassador from ninth paragraph)
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