It is July 2011. Hungary holds the rotating Presidency of the Council, and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is trying to paint himself as a force for unity in his address to the European Parliament. He speaks of European ideals and cooperation: “We believe in European unity. We believe in European cooperation. I belong to the generation whose grandparents clearly explained to us that if there is no European cooperation and no European unity, then sooner or later there is going to be war in Europe. We take this seriously. Therefore, as a nation that suffered a lot during world wars, we will always stand by European cooperation and European ideals.”
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen referred to this very speech on 9 October as she lambasted Orbán for his “transformation” into an authoritarian leader from the floor of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. “This is the second time that Hungary takes the Presidency of the Council,” she noted. “The first time was in 2011. And on that occasion, Prime Minister Orbán said: ‘We will follow in the footsteps of the revolutionaries of 1956. And intend to serve the cause of European unity. Europe must stay united to stand its ground.’ I think we all agree. Europe must stand united. This was true back then. And this is still true today.”
Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a.k.a. “Red Danny”, launched a salvo at Viktor Orbán, saying he was on his way to becoming a “European Chavez, a populist who does not understand the structure of democracy.”
As the years go by, Orbán’s metamorphosis becomes ever more complete. But this is not an unexpected development. Zoltan Gyévai, the Hungarian Brussels correspondent and analyst, describes the evolution of the Hungarian prime minister to To Vima: “From being a democrat, he has become an autocrat pure and simple. Ηe was very upset when he was removed from power in 2002. Then he lost the next two elections. The parties on the Left shared unbelievable thoughts and made incredible mistakes between 2002 and 2010. It was evident he would come back, but changed. He understood that, to be successful, he would have to build an autocracy. He had to focus constantly on retaining power at any cost. And he chose a bad direction, which was manipulation.”
He explains that “Orban’s way and strategy was to dismantle the checks and balances in a stealthy way, constantly moving the rules and the realities for Hungarians over many years. He used the classic ‘frog in boiling water’ method.”
Emmanuel Berretta, the editor-in-chief for Europe of the French magazine Le Point, who has interviewed the Hungarian prime minister in a tete-a-tete, shares a different side of the Hungarian prime minister with To Vima: “He is very approachable. Very straightforward. He doesn’t make you feel like he is a feared leader in his country. He keeps his promises. When he says yes, it’s yes.”
When we asked him why Viktor Orbán always plays the part of the rebel, voting against almost every EU resolution, and whether he wants to steal the show or fight for a more nationalist EU, he told us the Hungarian prime minister believes “the political history of Hungary is unique in Europe. As he sees it, Hungary is and has always been a “victim” of Europe. Viktor Orbán understood that this idea is deeply embedded in the collective psychology of his people. Of course, he does not go into why Hungary was dismembered… Its leaders consistently made the wrong choices in the 20th century, and Hungary paid for the mistakes for their mistakes.”
The other area Viktor Orbán employs to boost his influence, and where he claims the status of a Messiah, is the immigration issue, where he uses the sort of far-right rhetoric that also appeals to that section of the European public who want magic solutions to complex problems. Well, according to Orbán, one such solution is sending coaches full of migrants to Brussels, a move which allows him to reject the Pact on Immigration and Asylum while, once again, assuming the role of arbiter on all things.
“Viktor Orbán uses almost all the techniques of populist mobilization, but he faces a particular challenge. You see, he has ruled Hungary with an iron grip for 14 years. He controls over 80 per cent of the Hungarian media landscape, his cronies have access to all public procurement and EU resources, his pundits have ousted Hungary’s liberal cultural elite from their former positions, and his party has effectively become a state party while Hungary has slowly become a Fidesz party state. It is therefore somewhat difficult to make the typical populist claim that he is a political outsider—the simple, ordinary guy rebelling against the corrupt elites. He is the Hungarian elite, and his regime is widely known to be fundamentally corrupt,” Daniel Hegedüs, regional director of the German Marshall Fund, Transatlantic Trusts Central Europe, told To Vima.
As he adds, “This is why he needs external enemies to mobilize political support. And why migration, woke propaganda, foreign agents, the threat posed by ‘unelected’ EU institutions and the ‘warmongering’ United States are now central to his communication. He needs these concepts of external enemies to maintain popular support in a populist way, despite having been in power for almost 15 years now. Over time, his non-populist legitimacy has weakened. Hungary’s economic performance and competitiveness are in decline. Over the past decade, the country has effectively become the second poorest member of the EU, above only Bulgaria. Education and health care are in a desperate state. He no longer enjoys the economic legitimacy he had between 2010 and 2018. And that is why he has to rely on propaganda and mobilizing against imaginary enemies. Of course, this is also why his popularity is plummeting, why he is facing a serious challenge from Péter Magyar’s new Tisza Party, and why his position appears increasingly weak and shallow both domestically and internationally.”
However, the EU has little choice but to go along with Hungary, since it cannot expel it and Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union—which allows for the possibility of suspending European Union (EU) membership rights (such as voting rights in the Council of the European Union) if a country seriously and persistently breaches the principles on which the EU is founded as defined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for fundamental rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities)—would be extremely hard to apply successfully.
“The European treaties were not designed to expel a member state that systematically opposed everything. The sanction procedure of Article 7, which requires unanimity, is very cumbersome to set in motion. The EU has opted to wait for the national elections instead, so it is the Hungarians themselves who decide, one day, to oust Viktor Orbán for a leader who will be more pro-European. This is a longer-term calculation,” Emmanuel Berretta notes.
“The Orbán model allows you to steal democracy from a country, on the basic grounds that democracy is not a good thing for anybody,” says Zoltan Gyévai, though he goes on to add that he believes “Orbán knows he doesn’t want to leave the EU, but if the price for leaving would be him holding on to power, he would do it. But it would be very difficult for him to leave, because most Hungarians are very much in favor of the EU and of keeping Hungary in the EU, whatever Orbán might do, even if he speaks about Brussels in very negative terms. Even among the supporters of his own part, a third are pro-European.”
