Year XXXVIII, Number 1, March 2025

Andrea Bonanni
Correspondent for the newspaper la Repubblica in Brussels

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stood in front of the European Parliament, which had just been elected by universal suffrage, and in front of the President of the Commission, just elected by the new Parliament, to say that they are getting everything wrong and destroying Europe.

The MEPs and Ursula von der Leyen told him in no uncertain words to go to the devil. Some sang Bella ciao, others accused him of betraying Europe for the autocracies that aim to destroy it. The hostile tones of the clash that took place yesterday in the parliamentary chamber were unprecedented. Not even when MEPs criticised Berlusconi 20 years ago, and he called them ‘tourists of democracy’, did things go so far. The problem is that Orban has gained access to the Parliament because Hungary has been given the six-month rotating presidency of the EU. This is little more than a formal role, but one that obliges the government which is given this responsibility to uphold and defend the unitary policy directions decided in Brussels by the Parliament, the Council and the Commission. 

Instead, the Hungarian leader spoke not as a statesman, but as the leader of an extreme right-wing European party against which Europe has built a solid cordon sanitaire. This is not just a matter of serious institutional rule breaking. This time Orban was not at Pontida with his friend Salvini. Speaking before the representatives of the European people, he made it clear that he wants to use the rotating presidency of the Union ‘to catalyse the necessary change in the EU’. How he intends to do this is shown by his grovelling visits to Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping, his vetoes of sanctions against Russia and aid for Ukraine. His gesture is a clear challenge to the rules of European democracy and its very essence. All in all, the reactions of Parliament and the Commission were quite moderate.

But the incident does not exhaust the scope of the “Orban question,” which goes far beyond his overt contempt for liberal democracy, the corruption of his regime and even his attacks on the fundamental rights of Hungarians. Today, the Magyar leader has become the longa manus of Putin who, having failed to crush Europe by invading Ukraine, is trying to destroy it from within through the concerted action of the populist far-right, paradoxically self-designated “Patriots” party. As Putin's emissary, Orban is the political referent of the likes of Matteo Salvini, Marine Le Pen, the German neo-Nazis of the AfD, the Spanish Francoists of Vox, and the Dutch racists of Wilders. The Kremlin's puppet master has succeeded in conjuring up the ghosts of Nazi-fascism and its various collaborators in every corner of Europe. It is a macabre dance of spectres gathering support in the name of hatred, fear and frustration in order to put them at the service of Russia's neo-imperial ambitions involving the destruction of the EU. Orban is the medium and director of this cynical third-party operation. In many ways he is reminiscent of the British fascist Oswald Mosley, who continued to cheer for Hitler and Mussolini after the war had already begun. If anyone is still under the illusion that the rise of the far right in Europe is a normal political phenomenon, they are belied by the divisions in the reactionary front. As far as their ideas go, there are no major differences between Meloni and Salvini or between Poland's Jaroslav Kaczynski and Viktor Orban. They would not be able to list them themselves. But the ultra-right gathered together in the group of conservatives led by Meloni is the descendant of British Tories and Polish clerics, who have always been hostile to Moscow. The so-called “Patriots,” on the other hand, are working to destroy Europe on behalf of foreign powers such as Russia and China, who feel threatened by our values of democracy and solidarity.

We Europeans often forget that the roots of the war in Ukraine lie in the demonstrations in Maidan Square, adorned with pro-EU blue flags. But Putin remembers this very well. And in Orban he has found the tool to turn Europe against itself. For years Brussels has looked the other way and pretended not to see.

But yesterday's confrontation in Parliament shows that the EU has finally become aware of the asymmetric warfare going on not only in the Donbass but within our own borders.