Orban-ology is the study of why exactly Hungary’s populist right-wing prime minister is blocking the rest of the European Union from doing something and it can be a difficult academic pursuit.
Viktor Orban has frequently used veto powers to hold up the other EU states from taking decisions that need to be made by unanimous agreement. This has seen the release of several billion euro in aid for Ukraine delayed and at times muted EU condemnation of Israel during its devastating war in Gaza.
A truly transactional politician, Orban will block something to exact more leverage elsewhere. In the last few years the approach has seen him become the guy at the party who most others present wished had left hours ago.
During 14 years in power in Hungary he has suppressed political opposition and independent media, eroded the rights of minorities such as the LGBT+ community and taken a hard line on migration and asylum seekers. When he sits down with other EU leaders to discuss the Ukraine war he is the most Kremlin-friendly voice at the table.
Orban’s obstructionist approach, jamming up the cogs of the EU policymaking machine, means Hungary’s position on proposals often gains outsize influence. So it was interesting to hear him talk through his view of the world over two press conferences last week, during a summit of EU leaders in Budapest.
“I’m a patriot, that’s how I look at the European institutions ... My concept is that the European interest is nothing else, just the sum of the interests of the member states,” he said.
His populist government was not isolated within the EU, because it was still inside the room, he said. “If you had an opinion and you are alone, and the others think a different opinion, it’s not isolation, it’s a discussion,” he said. “To be alone with my opinion and then to fight to convince the others to follow my opinion, it’s part of our DNA.”
Hungary had been “totally alone” in taking a harsh line on asylum policy since 2015, building border fences to keep people out, he acknowledged. He noted, smugly, that many other EU states were now moving closer to his position.
He is not wrong there. Migration policy in European politics is shifting farther and farther to the right. Hard-right Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is pursuing a probably doomed plan to ship asylum seekers rescued in Italian waters to Albania, where their claims wouldi be processed. Germany, France and others are throwing up checks on their borders inside the Schengen free-travel area, under domestic pressure from the far right.
Both the setting and timing of the summit last week had Orban’s fingerprints all over them. The venue was the Puskas Arena football stadium in the Hungarian capital. Orban is a big football fan and known to make small talk about the sport with other leaders on the sidelines of meetings.
The summit was scheduled months ago to take place the week of the US presidential election, in which Orban was backing a Donald Trump victory. So it came to pass that leaders were sitting down together in Budapest in a new political reality. Orban himself was in great form, confident his central European country of 9.5 million people has a line straight to the White House.
Trump has promised to slap tariffs on all goods being sold from abroad into the US. If he follows through, the EU is preparing to respond with targeted tariffs on US goods, setting the stage for a trade war if the two cannot agree a detente. “It will be a tough negotiation ... We have to stand up and we have to negotiate and at the end of the day we have to make a deal,” Orban said.
More pressing for European security is what Trump decides to do in Ukraine, where he has boasted about being able to end the war in 24 hours. Supporters of Kyiv fear the US president-elect will threaten to cut off all military and financial aid if Ukraine doesn’t agree to a settlement with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“With the US elections the camp of those who want peace increased many fold,” Orban told reporters. Many observers read “peace” in this context to mean Ukraine giving up large parts of its territory currently occupied by Russian forces.
Poland and the Baltic States to the east recognise that if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he could threaten their doorsteps next and they have pushed the EU to throw its full weight behind Kyiv since the full-scale invasion started.
Orban has calculated that his best bet of guaranteeing Hungary’s security is to distance it from the rest of the pro-Kyiv coalition. “I have tried to isolate Hungary from the danger of the war,” he said. That approach will continue to earn him more praise in Moscow than it does in Brussels.