Brussels assassin Viktor Orban takes over as EU president

That’s because the central European country has been mired in controversy and billions of euros in frozen funds amid concerns about corruption and continued attacks on democracy. In geopolitical matters too, there is a total contradiction. Against his associates, Mr. Orban supports former US President Donald Trump, from whom he borrowed the slogan for the next six months – “Make Europe Great Again”. Close to Chinese President Xi Jinping, he is cultivating ties with the Kremlin and refuses to support Kiev militarily.

From the liberal camp to “liberalism”.

However, as a young liberal, at the age of 26, he made a name for himself when, in June 1989, he paid tribute to the victims of the freedom struggle against the communist regime in Budapest. 1956 Revolt against the Red Army. A co-founder of the Alliance of Young Democrats (Fidesz), he became a symbol of Hungary’s aspirations to free itself from dictatorship and adopt Western values.

A thousand miles from his start, Viktor Orbán today denounces the “decline of the West” in the face of the “LGBT + lobby” and the influx of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, continuing to assimilate “terrorists”. The culmination of a long process towards the extreme right.

In 1998 the Prime Minister, aged 35, was defeated in the elections by the Socialists and had to relinquish power four years later. When he returned to power in 2010, he decided to consolidate his hold so that he would never again experience what he had experienced as a humiliation. Conveniently re-elected in every legislative session since then, the father of five claims to be implementing “liberal democracy.”

“Connection” with Russia –

“Over the past 14 years, Orbán has aligned himself with the Putinist ideology of a West in total chaos” and an alignment of opposing forces, analyzes Stefano Bottoni, an Italian-Hungarian historian at the University of Florence. It is in the light of these developments that we must understand his position on the Russian offensive in Ukraine, he said.

Listening to the 61-year-old leader, it was not Moscow, but NATO and the EU that caused the “global turmoil”. A position that increasingly annoys his allies. “He does not realize how toxic it is,” the expert believes, because “for many countries, the most important issue of the moment of redefinition of Europe is the war in Ukraine.”

Even within the far right, this is leading to “a strategic stalemate,” Mr. Bottoni. He promised to “occupy Brussels” and be “a kingmaker”. Eventually, it slips into the third category.

Fidesz, which has been at odds with its conservative EPP partners in the European Parliament for years, is struggling to find a new footing. Internationally weakened, he was challenged by the emergence of a new rival, the conservative Peter Magyar, a pure product of the Orbán organization.