After a long time, Europe has the opportunity to take its future into its own hands, restore its long-lost prestige, and promote peace in Ukraine. Instead, Brussels has initiated a childish vendetta against Hungary over Viktor Orbán’s peace mission. Missing such opportunities out of hubris and pettiness demonstrates the utter incompetence of the EU leadership.

‘Bluntly, the war in Ukraine has unveiled the West’s ESG goals for the hypocrisy they are. The political and business leaders who promoted them are now caught up in their own contradictions,’ Khaled Abou Zahr has written in an opinion piece published by Arab News. The article highlights the contradictions between Western leaders’ warmongering statements and their promotion of green policies and a sustainable future.

Hungary and Slovakia are taking joint action against Ukraine over its halting of Russian oil shipments to the two EU member states. This move seriously threatens the long-term energy security of both countries, and is considered a violation of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement by Budapest and Bratislava.

Polish MEP Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik has been catapulted to fame by her tough speech last week in the European Parliament mercilessly criticizing Ursula von der Leyen. Zajączkowska-Hernik stated, among other things, that von der Leyen should go to jail instead of seeking re-election for her political activities over the past five years. The Polish MEP’s speech has already been viewed by nearly 3 million people on X.

The level of escalation in the Middle East has risen significantly after Israel struck a Houthi-controlled port in Yemen over the weekend, marking the first such attack since the war between Hamas and Israel broke out last October. The retaliatory strike follows a deadly drone attack by the Yemeni Houthis on Tel Aviv.

Balázs Orbán, the political director of the Hungarian Prime Minister, discussed Viktor Orbán’s peace mission and its impact in a lengthy post on X. He wrote: ‘The winds of change are upon us; it’s time for European leaders to overcome years of war psychosis!’

Italian antifascist-attacker-turned-MEP Ilaria Salis was quick to criticize Hungary in her very first post on X as a member of the European Parliament, accusing Budapest of not having guaranteed her fundamental rights due to her political beliefs as an antifascist while she was in custody and under house arrest. Zoltán Kovács, Hungarian State Secretary for International Communication and Relations, responded by calling on Salis’ defenders to ‘stop whitewashing a communist terrorist who led a group that almost killed someone on the streets of Budapest in broad daylight.’

Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc International Airport has also been affected by the global tech outage ongoing since Friday morning. According to the latest information, an update to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform is behind the IT problems causing disruptions worldwide.

After some details had been circulating in the press for days, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán decided to release his ten-point proposal and assessment he had sent to the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, following his peace mission. The document is the most detailed plan for achieving peace in Ukraine that has ever been made public since the war broke out in February 2022.

Viktor Orbán has been receiving increasing praise from Germany in recent days—something that has not happened for a long time. Henryk M. Broder, a columnist for the German newspaper Die Welt, lauded the Hungarian Prime Minister for his peace mission, stating that, seeing the EU’s failure, Orbán has taken Europe’s fate into his own hands and is doing so quite skillfully. Additionally, a left-wing German MP remarked that Orbán’s peace mission justifies why the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.

On 18 July the European Parliament re-elected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen with 401 votes in favour. In her speech before the vote, von der Leyen made numerous political promises for the next five years but also, of course, criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission.

The majority of Hungarians agree with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian government in not supporting Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as President of the European Commission. The vote in the European Parliament will take place on Thursday, 18 July, but it is far from certain that the current president will secure the 361 votes needed for re-election.

The left-wing, pro-war majority in the European Parliament refused to vote in favour of a proposal by Patriots for Europe (PfE) to condemn the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump. ‘Their intolerance forms the basis for politically motivated violence and threatens our democratic institutions,’ PfE First Vice-Chairman Kinga Gál pointed out after the vote.

The news of the assassination attempt against former US President Donald Trump had barely reached Hungary before hateful comments calling for the death of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán appeared in the comments sections of liberal media. Máté Kocsis, the parliamentary group leader of Hungary’s governing party, Fidesz, called for immediate action against all forms of incitement to violence.

All indications suggest that Brussels simply cannot get over Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission. In the latest development, 63 MEPs have written an open letter to EU leaders, urging them to strip Hungary of its voting rights in response to the prime minister’s ‘rogue’ diplomacy. Additionally, the European Commission has instructed its commissioners to skip informal ministerial meetings organized by the Hungarian EU presidency.

‘If Europe wants peace and wants to have a decisive say in the settlement of the war and the end of the bloodshed, then a change of direction must be worked out and implemented now,’ Balázs Orbán said in an interview with Magyar Nemzet. The political director of the Hungarian Prime Minister discussed Viktor Orbán’s recent peace mission and also commented on the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump.

‘The vast majority of Americans and various politicians, whether Democrat or Republican, have come out in support of Trump. Most of the statements have aimed to show unity rather than the usual mudslinging we typically see. Hopefully, we are able to learn and move on from this,’ Republican congressional aide Johnny Szani pointed out speaking to Hungarian Conservative. According to Szani, the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump has united America in a way that has not been seen in a long time. However, he believes this unity will not last long with the elections approaching.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán travelled to Florida for the fifth stop of his peace mission, where he was received by former US President Donald Trump. Trump thanked Orbán for his efforts, stating that peace must be brought about as quickly as possible, as many lives have been lost in a war that should never have started.

Just as in the presidential debate, Joe Biden failed to deliver an acceptable performance in his ‘big boy’ press conference this morning. The voices of discontent within the Democratic Party are growing louder. Whether the current president should step aside and hand his presidential candidacy to Vice President Kamala Harris remains to be seen in the coming days.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission has prompted EU ambassadors to consider punitive measures against Hungary. According to POLITICO, the envoys criticized the country during a meeting that lasted for more than two hours on Wednesday, but they have not yet devised a specific means of punishment.

As expected, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is continuing the peace mission he started in Kyiv last week at the NATO summit in Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the defence alliance is increasing its support for Ukraine, with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg calling the path to NATO membership for the war-torn country irreversible.

Eight prominent British and American public figures have published an open letter in the Financial Times calling for an immediate ceasefire and peace talks in Ukraine. According to one of the authors, their letter was influenced by Viktor Orbán’s peace mission launched last week.

In a break with tradition, Viktor Orbán’s speech at the first plenary session of the European Parliament, where he was to present the programme of the Hungarian Presidency, may be postponed. The stated reason is that the Hungarian PM’s speech does ‘not fit into the EP’s timetable’.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has defended Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s new EP political group, Patriots for Europe (PfE), stating that it is not a pro-Putin group. Meanwhile, the mainstream EP political groups are working to completely exclude PfE MEPs from parliamentary work for the next five years.

A rare opinion piece has been published by Die Welt recently discussing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission that kicked off last week. The article concludes that Orbán ‘deserves a chance’ and is doing more for peace than those in Washington and Brussels who criticize him.

The Metrodome Group, active in the Budapest real estate market since 1996, is opening its first representative office in Israel to offer investment opportunities in the Hungarian capital to Israeli investors. Among the many positive arguments in favour of Budapest, one that stands out is that Hungary remains one of the safest countries for the Jewish community in Europe.

After just one week since its foundation, Patriots for Europe (PfE) has been officially accredited as a political group in the new European Parliament. With 84 MEPs from 12 member states, PFE has become the third-largest EP group and the biggest patriotic force in Europe.

The New Popular Front, an electoral alliance including the far left, has won the second round of the French National Assembly elections. Despite finishing third, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is the real winner of the elections, with the right-wing party becoming France’s largest party, strengthening its position in parliament, and looking ahead to the 2027 presidential elections with good chances.

On the afternoon of 8 July, Patriots for Europe, the sovereigntist alliance recently founded by Viktor Orbán, Herbert Kickl, and Andrej Babiš, is to officially become a political group in the European Parliament. Over the weekend, several right-wing parties across Europe announced their accession. With the arrival of Marine Le Pen’s RN and, most likely, with Salvini’s League, Patriots for Europe are set to overtake Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) as third largest group in the EP.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the prospects for a settlement in Ukraine and their countries’ bilateral relations in Moscow on Friday. The visit to Russia was the second stop of Orbán’s peace mission, following talks in Kyiv on Tuesday.