Event: Viktor Orban

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Facing a serious election challenge, Prime Minister Viktor Orban is holding up a big E.U. loan for Ukraine. Analysts say the timing is no coincidence.Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary in Budapest last month.Credit...Attila Kisbenedek/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 27, 2026Updated 10:31 a.m. ETThe timing must have been irresistible for Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary.The European Union was pushing through two important projects in time for the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine this week. One was a critical 90 billion euro loan for Ukraine of about $106 billion, and the other the E.U.’s 20th package of sanctions to increase pressure on Russia.Mr. Orban, who is entering a surprisingly tough election campaign, decided to play the spoiler. He raised an objection to the loan and the sanctions and turned what was supposed to be a sterling show of European solidarity into an embarrassing display of disunity.By now, E.U. members are familiar with such tactics by Mr. Orban, who has routinely thrown up obstacles to their plans in order to win concessions. That did not make his action any less enraging to European partners, who saw the timing as clearly connected to elections in Hungary on April 12, in which Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party is struggling.“Using the European agenda to wage domestic political battles, and doing so after having turned one’s own society — through propaganda — against a fighting Ukraine, is, in my view, a violation of European solidarity,” Radosław Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, told reporters on Monday.After nearly 16 years in power, which makes him the longest serving prime minister in the European Union, Mr. Orban had consolidated a seemingly…

On July 26th 2025, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, held his annual speech at Fidesz’s summer camp in Transylvania, spouting his usual lambasting of the EU for “supporting, at a global level, the ideology – which we might call progressive or woke – that President Trump has been fighting against”. Back in Hungary, Peter Magyar, leader of the opposition Respect and Freedom (Tisza) party, stood before a crowd in Szekesfehervar and declared Hungary’s place to be in Europe and in the West. His speech felt like a time capsule. It recalled an era when Hungary’s foreign policy still aligned with its allies. In style and tone, it was a throwback to the early 2010s and to Orban’s own origins when Fidesz’s first foreign minister, Janos Martonyi, stuck to a triad of foreign policy priorities: EU and NATO alignment, good neighbourly relations, and responsibility for Hungarians abroad. These fundaments, once shared across political lines in post-communist Hungary, have long been subjugated to party politics by Fidesz. Under Orban, Hungary’s domestic and international posture has changed dramatically. Foreign policy, once predictable, is now riddled with vetoes, brinkmanship and ideological antagonism. What Tisza offers is not a new doctrine, but the revival of an old: repairing trust and re-anchoring the country in its alliances, while still strengthening its sovereignty. It is a foreign policy of recommitment—but the change it could bring is radical. Whether Tisza gets the chance to implement its vision will be decided in the parliamentary election on April 12th, when Fidesz will face its strongest challenger in 16 years. Despite the deeply uneven playing field, the election could bring the victory of the centre-right Tisza, which has been leading Orban’s party in the polls for over a year. Go West As Tisza’s foreign-minister designate Anita Orban put it, Hungary…