Hungary’s nationalist leader warns of EU's demise and backs Trump in anti-Western speech

BAILE TUSNAD, Romania (AP) — Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Saturday that the European Union was sliding toward oblivion in a rambling anti-Western speech in which he warned of a new, Asia-oriented “world order” while throwing his support for Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential bid.

“Europe has given up defending its own interests,” Orbán said in Baile Tusnad, a majority-ethnic Hungarian town in central Romania. “All Europe is doing today is following the U.S.’s pro-Democrat foreign policy unconditionally … even at the cost of self-destruction.”

“A change is coming that has not been seen for 500 years. What we are facing is in fact a world order change," he added, citing China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as becoming the “dominant center” of the world.

Orbán also alleged that the U.S. was behind the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines built to carry gas from Russia to Germany, calling it “an act of terrorism carried out at the obvious direction of the Americans.” He didn't offer any evidence to back up the claim.

The far-right leader’s remarks come amid growing criticism from his European partners after he embarked on rogue “peace mission” trips to Moscow and Beijing earlier this month aimed at brokering an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Orbán is widely considered to have the warmest relations with the Kremlin among all EU leaders.

On Ukraine, Orbán cast doubt on the war-torn country becoming either a member of NATO or the EU. “We Europeans do not have the money for it. Ukraine will revert to the position of a buffer state,” he said, adding that international security guarantees “will be enshrined in an agreement between the US and Russia.”

Throughout Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Orbán has broken with other EU leaders by refusing to provide Kyiv with weapons to defend against Russian forces and has routinely delayed, watered down, or blocked efforts to send financial aid to Kyiv and impose sanctions on Moscow.

Orbán typically uses the annual Tusvanyos Summer University platform in Romania to indicate the ideological direction of his national government and to deride the standards of the EU bloc, which Hungary joined in 2004.

Hungary currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, during which Orbán has made a Trumpian vow to “Make Europe Great Again” and has openly endorsed Trump’s candidacy in this year’s U.S. presidential election. Orbán visited Trump twice this year at the former president’s beachside compound in Mar-a-Lago.

Orbán said Saturday that Trump’s bid for re-election aims “to pull the American people back from a post-nationalist liberal state to a nation-state” and rehashed a slew of conservative tropes that Trump is being penalized unfairly to prevent his electoral bid.

“That is why they want to put him in prison. That’s why they want to take away his assets. And if that doesn’t work, that’s why they want to kill him,” Orbán said, referring to an assassination attempt on Trump at a Pennsylvania rally this month.

U.S. ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, responded to Orbán's comments on Saturday in a post on the social media platform X, saying that such rhetoric “risks changing Hungary’s relationship with America.”

“We have no other ally or partner … that similarly, overtly, and tirelessly campaigns for a specific candidate in an election in the United States of America, seemingly convinced that no matter, it only helps Hungary — or at least helps him personally,” Pressman said, and went on to accuse Orbán of peddling “Kremlin conspiracy theories about the United States. Hardly what we expect from an Ally.”

Orbán’s remarks on Saturday aren’t the first time he’s used the festival in Transylvania to stir controversy. In 2014, Orban declared for the first time his intentions to build an “illiberal state” in Hungary, and in 2022, he sparked international outrage after he railed against Europe becoming a “mixed race” society. He doubled down on his long-held anti-immigration stance on Saturday, saying it is not an answer to his country's aging population.

“There can be no question of a shrinking population supplemented by migration,” he said in his Saturday address. “The Western experience is that if there are more guests than owners, then home is no longer home. This is a risk that should not be taken.”

The EU’s longest-serving leader, Orbán has become an icon to some conservative populists for his firm opposition to immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. He has also cracked down on the press and judiciary in Hungary and has been accused by the EU of violating rule-of-law and democracy standards.

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McGrath reported from Sighisoara, Romania. Bálint Dömötör contributed from London.