BAIRE TUSNAD, Romania (AP) — In a rambling, anti-Western speech, Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Saturday said the European Union is sliding into oblivion, supported Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential bid and warned of a new Asia-oriented “world order.”
“Europe has given up on defending its own interests,” Orban said in Baile Tusnad, a predominantly ethnic Hungarian town in central Romania. “All Europe is doing now is unconditionally submitting to America’s pro-Democratic foreign policy … even at the cost of self-destruction.”
“Changes not seen for 500 years are on the way. What we are facing is in fact a change in the world order,” he added, noting that China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia are becoming the world’s “dominant centres”.
Orban also alleged that the United States was behind the 2022 explosion that destroyed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany, calling it “a terrorist act clearly carried out at the behest of the United States.” He did not provide any evidence to support his claim.
The far-right leader’s comments came amid growing criticism from European partners after he launched an unregulated “peace mission” visit to Moscow and Beijing earlier this month aimed at brokering an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Orban is widely considered to have the warmest relationship with the Kremlin among EU leaders.
Regarding Ukraine, Orban questioned whether the war-torn country could join NATO or the EU. “We in Europe do not have the funds for this. Ukraine will return to the status of a buffer state,” he said, adding that international security guarantees “will be included in an agreement between the United States and Russia.”
Throughout Russia’s all-out war in Ukraine, Mr. Orban has broken with other EU leaders by refusing to provide Kiev with weapons to defend itself against Russian forces, and has regularly delayed, weakened or blocked efforts to provide financial aid to Kiev and impose sanctions on Moscow.
Orban typically uses Romania’s annual Tusvanyos Summer University to set out his government’s ideological direction and mock the norms of the European Union, which Hungary joined in 2004.
Hungary currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, during which Prime Minister Orban Trump’s oath Prime Minister Orban has pledged to “Make Europe Great Again” and has openly supported Trump’s candidacy in this year’s US presidential election. visited Trump has met with him twice this year at the former president’s beachfront estate at Mar-a-Lago.
Orban said Saturday that Trump’s reelection bid was aimed at “pulling the American people back from post-nationalist liberal states to the nation-state,” repeating a standard conservative trope that Trump is being unfairly punished to prevent him from challenging the election.
“That’s why they want to put Trump in jail. That’s why they want to take his assets. And if that doesn’t work, that’s why they want to kill him,” Orban said, referring to the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania this month.
US Ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, responded to Orban’s comments in a post on social media platform “X” on Saturday, saying such statements “risk altering the relationship between Hungary and the US.”
“We have no other ally or partner outside of Hungary that is campaigning as openly and vigorously for specific candidates in the US elections, as if they were convinced that this would be beneficial for Hungary, or at least for Hungarians as individuals,” Pressman said, adding that Orban is “spreading Kremlin conspiracy theories about the United States. One hardly expects anything less from an ally.”
Orban’s comments on Saturday were not the first time he has used the Transylvanian festival to stir controversy. In 2014, Orban “Illiberal state” In Hungary in 2022, he sparked international outrage. Condemned Europe is becoming a “mixed race” society, President Trump said Saturday, ratcheting up his longstanding anti-immigration stance and saying it was not the solution to the countries’ ageing populations.
“There can be no question of immigration adding to population decline,” he said in a speech on Saturday. “The Western experience is that when there are more visitors than owners, a house is no longer a home. This is a risk that should not be taken.”
Orban is the EU’s longest serving prime minister. icon To the conservative populists Immigration and LGBTQ+ rightsHe also press It violates Hungary’s judicial system and has been condemned by the EU as violating the rule of law and democratic standards.
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McGrath reported from Sighisoara, Romania. Bálint Dömötör contributed from London.
