BAILE TUSNAD, Romania — Hungary's nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Saturday that the European Union was drifting into irrelevance. In a rambling anti-Western speech, he warned of a brand new Asia-oriented “world order” while voicing his support for Donald Trump's candidacy for U.S. president.
“Europe has given up defending its own interests,” Orbán said in Baile Tusnad, a Hungarian-majority town in central Romania. “All Europe is doing today is unconditionally following the US's pro-democratic foreign policy… even at the cost of self-destruction.”
“We are facing a change that we have not seen for 500 years. What we are really facing is a change in the world order,” he added, mentioning that China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia would change into the “dominant centre” of the world.
Orbán also claimed that the US was behind the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines that transport gas from Russia to Germany. He called it “an act of terrorism that was obviously carried out on the instructions of the Americans.” He provided no evidence to support this claim.
The far-right politician's comments come at a time of growing criticism from his European partners after he undertook unauthorized “peace missions” to Moscow and Beijing earlier this month to broker an end to Russia's war in Ukraine. Orbán is widely thought to be the EU leader with one of the best relations with the Kremlin.
Regarding Ukraine, Orbán expressed doubts that the war-torn country could change into a member of NATO or the EU. “We Europeans do not have the money for that. Ukraine will fall back into the position of a buffer state,” he said, adding that international security guarantees “will be anchored in an agreement between the US and Russia.”
Throughout Russia's war in Ukraine, Orbán has broken with the stance of other EU leaders, refusing to produce weapons to Kyiv to defend itself against Russian forces, and commonly delaying, watering down or blocking efforts to supply financial support to Kyiv and impose sanctions on Moscow.
Orbán typically uses Romania's annual Tusvanyos summer university to hint on the ideological orientation of his national government and mock the standards of the EU bloc, which Hungary joined in 2004.
Hungary currently holds the rotating EU Council Presidency, while Orbán is a Trump's vow “Make Europe Great Again” and has openly supported Trump’s candidacy on this 12 months’s US presidential election. Orbán Visited Trump visited the previous president's beachfront estate Mar-a-Lago twice this 12 months.
Orbán said on Saturday that Trump's candidacy for re-election was aimed toward “leading the American people from a post-nationalist liberal state back to a nation-state,” and repeated a series of conservative rhetoric saying Trump was being unfairly punished to forestall his election candidacy.
“That's why they want to put him in prison. That's why they want to take away his wealth. And if that doesn't work, they want to kill him,” Orbán said, referring to an assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania this month.
US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman responded to Orbán's comments in a post on social media platform X on Saturday, saying such rhetoric “risks changing Hungary's relationship with America.”
“We have no other ally or partner … who campaigns in a similar way, openly and tirelessly for a particular candidate in an election in the United States of America, apparently convinced that no matter what happens, it will only help Hungary – or at least him personally,” Pressman said, accusing Orbán of spreading “Kremlin conspiracy theories about the United States. That is hardly what we expect from an ally.”
Orbán’s comments on Saturday are usually not the primary time he has used the festival in Transylvania to fire up controversy. In 2014, Orbán first announced his intention to carry a “illiberal state” in Hungary, and in 2022 he sparked international outrage after railed against Europe is becoming a “multiracial” society. On Saturday, he reiterated his long-held anti-immigration stance, saying it was not the reply to his country's ageing population.
Orbán, the longest-serving EU head of state, is an emblem to some conservative populists for his determined opposition to immigration And LGBTQ+ rightsHe can be tough on the press and justice in Hungary and is accused by the EU of violating constitutional and democratic standards.
Originally published:
image credit : www.mercurynews.com