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 Itamar Eichner phrased in his Ynet News article, ‘Without the opposition from Israel’s friends in the EU, such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Germany, the EU might have already passed sanctions against Israel. Foreign policy decisions in the EU require consensus, which Israel’s allies prevent.’

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.

As more and more people from his own party call on President Biden to step aside, President Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election seems more certain by the day. However, how much can one trust polling data after what happened in 2016 and 2022?

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.

‘It took Hungary 14 years to achieve decisive changes in cultural education. Similarly, we will need time to create a substantial cultural and political movement to bring about meaningful legal changes.’

In December last year a new law created a distinct category for ‘EU minorities’ in Ukraine (such as the Hungarian and Romanian ethnic minorities) that now have access to more privileges than for instance the Russian minority. Later, as a sign of goodwill to better relations, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó visited Ukraine. Now, with the meeting between Orbán and Zelenskyy the two country’s relationship is officially warming up. If in the long-term Budapest does manage to considerably contribute to peace between Russia and Ukraine, as it clearly intends to, it might have a long-lasting positive impact on bilateral relations.

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.

A clip of PM Orbán of Hungary citing George Soros’ European migration plan published in 2015 in Project Syndicate was recently shared on the social media site X in reference to the election results in the United Kingdom and France, and garnered over 25,000 likes within 12 hours.

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.

The integration of the countries of the region into the EU is a decades-long process, the positive outcome of which is still to be seen. Thus, the number of Eurosceptics in the region has multiplied in recent years. As a consequence of the protracted accession negotiations, which have not even started for several Western Balkan states, some countries in the region have forged closer economic, political, and cultural ties with non-EU actors.

According to former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán aims to create ‘maximum discomfort’ for the new European Parliament with his newly established right-wing alliance, Patriots for Europe. Juncker harshly criticized the Hungarian PM as well as former US President Donald Trump in an interview with POLITICO.

By Wednesday evening it became clear that the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party would not join Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s new right-wing alliance, Patriots for Europe. Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party is showing a growing willingness to do so, which could set off an avalanche of changes from which Orbán could only emerge victorious.

US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman first praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for his trip to Kyiv, then harshly criticized him for ‘overtly and tirelessly’ supporting Donald Trump in the US presidential election race. According to Pressman, the partisan politicization of bilateral relations is dangerous and detrimental to the US– Hungarian relationship.

‘The Bukele model is turning the neoliberal approach on its head. It advocates for a strong state, with the leader—in this case, the president of El Salvador—as the all-important controller of decisions in determining the country’s future. The budget of the state has ballooned, starting with the heavy funding of security services while simultaneously investing in social services, from the creation of neighbourhood social centres to the augmenting of pensions and investing into getting the Bitcoin into circulation.’

‘Hungary is preparing for an exceptionally active EU Presidency,’ Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán notes in an opinion piece published by the Financial Times. In the article Orbán outlines the priorities of the Hungarian EU Presidency, with a particular focus on boosting European competitiveness.

With the 1960 US presidential race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon being so close, many scholars and commentators believed at the time that it was the first ever televised presidential debate that decided the outcome of the election. As a result, most campaign strategists deemed debating too risky for the candidates, thus no presidential debate took place in the US until 1976, when incumbent Gerald Ford debated Jimmy Carter.

‘Patriots for Europe will, within days, become the largest right-wing political group in the European Parliament,’ Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated in Vienna on Sunday. In our analysis we look at which parties could join the newly formed alliance.

On Sunday, 30 June 2024 Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared that a new era in European politics has begun. At a press conference held jointly with Herbert Kickl and Andrej Babiš PM Orbán outlined the vision for a revamped European political alliance. The new political family aims to reshape the landscape of European governance and address the pressing issues faced by the continent, the Hungarian prime minister said.

According to Portuguese writer, political scientist and university professor Jaime Nogueira Pinto right-wing parties like CHEGA, called populists by the mainstream media, are successful with voters across Europe because traditional parties do not pay enough attention to the issues that are actually important to voters.

After late-night talks, EU leaders have decided on the top jobs of the EU, with Ursula von der Leyen preparing for a second term as President of the European Commission, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa as President of the European Council. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán criticized the pact between the EPP, S&D, and Renew, which disregards the will of the voters, calling it a ‘coalition of lies and deceit’.

At the Union’s Representative Council (SZKT) meeting in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) on Thursday, the RMDSZ president stated that the alliance is the only credible representative of Hungarians in Transylvania. He explained that the RMDSZ serves as a tool for Hungarian advocacy and as an organizer for the Hungarian community in Transylvania, with over 90 per cent of votes for Hungarian parties going to RMDSZ candidates in this year’s local elections.

According to CNN’s own poll, more than two-thirds, 67 per cent of the viewers thought that President Trump had won the debate. President Biden’s odds for re-election plummeted after the event, with bookmakers giving him only about a 22.5 per cent chance for re-election on average. Meanwhile, some in the left-leaning media call on Biden not to stand for re-election.

‘Family policy will remain of utmost importance to us, as part of our overarching priority of demography during our presidency. It is clear that all of our societies are being reshaped by the challenges of demographic change. The Hungarian Presidency intends to examine demography from the perspective of competitiveness in a holistic way by including it in the agenda of almost all council formations,’ State Secretary responsible for families at the Ministry of Culture and Innovation Ágnes Hornung told Hungarian Conservative in a recent interview.

Donald Trump has expanded his lead over Joe Biden in the national polling aggregate since his conviction. Meanwhile, President Biden’s approval rating by Gallup is at an abysmal 38 per cent ahead of the CNN debate in Atlanta, Georgia tonight, which is not a good indicator for reelection.

In its country report on Hungary, the IMF proposes the same measures to ‘recover’ the Hungarian economy that brought the country to the brink of collapse in 2008. In his Facebook post, Balázs Orbán stressed: ‘We won’t ask for it again, thank you!’

The updated test will now include questions covering topics regarding the Holocaust, Jewish culture, and the state of Israel. This initiative, part of a broader revision of the citizenship test, aims to ensure that applicants have a comprehensive understanding of Germany’s complex history and its stance on Israel.

The description of the Thucydides Trap is more a description of a spontaneous escalation rather than a well-calculated move towards changing the international order. Applied to the case of the US and China, the ‘Thucydides Trap’ is far removed from the reality and complexity of such power relations, beyond being a useful rhetorical tool.

‘Nevertheless, the Tories will be swept away by popular anger on 4 July. Then, who’s left? No one else than the infamous Nigel Farage. And it is exactly the Conservative Party’s obfuscation and identity crisis that Brexit leader Nigel Farage has used to launch the Reform UK party.’