BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made a Trumpian vow to “Make Europe Great Again” during his country’s six-month presidency of the European Union. As a first step last week, he astonished his allies by making a surprise trip to Ukraine — his first since Moscow invaded the country — followed by similarly unannounced visits to Russia and China for talks with two of the EU’s primary adversaries.
The EU’s longest-serving leader — who has endorsed former President Donald Trump and is known as having the warmest relations with Vladimir Putin in the bloc — wrapped up a NATO summit in Washington on Thursday before traveling to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound — his latest stop on what he calls a “peace mission” aimed at brokering an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Orbán shared a photo of himself and Trump on social media with the caption: “We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”
On his own social media site, Trump posted: “Thank you Viktor. There must be PEACE, and quickly.”
But Orbán’s talks with Putin last week in Moscow, the first such visit by any EU leader since 2022, and his meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing, have angered the bloc’s leaders and prompted attempts to contain Hungary during the next six months of its EU presidency.
“As the president country, one must act as an honest broker and not give the impression that you are speaking for other countries,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters at the NATO summit on Thursday. “(Orban) in reality is abusing the EU presidency and hijacking it for his own purposes.”
Péter Krekó, an analyst with the Budapest-based think tank Political Capital, said that Hungary’s rotating presidency has thus far been an exercise in “troll diplomacy,” and that Obán’s self-declared “peace mission” will only isolate him further from his Western partners who increasingly regard him as working against EU and NATO interests and undermining their efforts to assist Ukraine.
“He’s marginalizing himself more and more in EU politics, and it’s a foreign policy of self-destruction,” Krekó said.
He continued: “Orbán could have used the opportunity of the rotating presidency to get a bit closer to the European mainstream and organize high-level meetings in Budapest that could bring him some recognition in a period where he desperately needs it. Instead, he just got further from the mainstream.”
Orbán has long confounded his Western partners by pursuing warm ties with Putin, a relationship that was rendered more alarming when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
