Recently, more and more progressives have been perpetuating the misconception that Hungary, under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is isolated within the transatlantic international community. Most notably, Manfred Weber, President of the European People’s Party (EPP), claimed during the infamous October plenary session of the European Parliament (EP) that no one is willing to engage in dialogue or negotiations with the Hungarian government.
Since then, Orbán has repeatedly refuted these claims. Less than a week after Weber’s statement, he was hosted in Berlin by Chancellor Olaf Scholz for bilateral talks, followed shortly by a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. Within two months of the EPP president’s accusations, the Hungarian prime minister embarked on his second peace mission. During this initiative, he met with Pope Francis, US President-elect Donald Trump, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and held a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the conclusion of the mission, Orbán proposed a Christmas ceasefire and a large-scale prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine.
This, in itself, is a remarkable achievement for a Central European country with a population of barely ten million. However, Hungary’s international influence is poised to grow even further in the near future, especially following the inauguration of Donald Trump—a close ally of Viktor Orbán—on 20 January 2025.
Unexpected Recognition
Romanian Senator Ciprian Rus, a representative of the progressive (at least by Romanian standards) Save Romania Union (USR), recognized these developments in an interview, noting that shifts in international politics are likely to significantly enhance Hungary’s influence in the coming years.
‘We knew that if Donald Trump won the US presidential election, the most influential man in Europe—the politician whose phone calls would be answered by Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping—would be Viktor Orbán,’ Rus highlighted, according to a review by Magyar Nemzet.
He further stated his conviction that Europe and the European Union are undergoing significant changes. ‘There is a certain power to Viktor Orbán at the moment,’ he emphasized. In this context, he also pointed out that Romanian diplomacy lacks the ability to demonstrate comparable strength on the international stage.
The statement is surprising not only because, to put it mildly, it is not usual to praise Viktor Orbán in Romanian political discourse, but also because the USR belongs to the liberal Renew political group in the EP, which frequently and vehemently criticizes the Hungarian prime minister. For instance, USR presidential candidate Elena Lasconi, who was set to face ultranationalist Călin Georgescu in the second round of the presidential election—later annulled by the Romanian Constitutional Court—claimed in an earlier interview that she would consider banning Viktor Orbán from entering Romania if she were elected president.
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