The long-serving Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is considered a football fan. It is therefore not surprising that he also travelled to Germany for the Hungarian national team’s second European Championship match. With a fan scarf around his shoulders, he sat in the VIP box not far from Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the Stuttgart stadium on Wednesday evening and watched the match between Hungary and Germany – which ended 2-0 for the German team.
The defeat of his Hungarians can be seen as a sign that Orbán’s streak of bad luck continues. In June, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) imposed financial sanctions on the Hungarian government for failing to implement European asylum regulations. 200 million euros are to be paid, one million euros for each additional day that Budapest fails to implement a 2020 ECJ ruling on this matter.
Shortly before, Orbán had to accept the poor performance of his party Fidesz in the European elections. Andreas Bock, Hungary expert at the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), spoke to WELT of a “historically bad result”. With 44.8 percent of the votes cast, Fidesz is still the strongest Hungarian party, but it lost 7.7 percent and now only has eleven seats in the EU Parliament. This is a bitter blow for Orbán, who is used to success.
The relative weakness of Fidesz has something to do with the surprising rise of Peter Magyar. The man who markets himself as a former Fidesz insider is a conservative opponent of Orbán who has emerged in Hungary and denounces corruption in the state, regularly bringing tens of thousands of people onto the streets. It is another nuisance for the Prime Minister.
Magyar’s Tisza party was able to win 29.6 percent of the vote and thus enter the EU Parliament with seven seats. While there are indications that Magyar will join the European People’s Party (EPP) group, Fidesz is still independent in Brussels and therefore has little influence. In general, Orbán’s influence in European politics is dwindling: Because of his proximity to Russia, he is largely isolated, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, where many governments feel particularly threatened by Moscow’s attack on Ukraine and its aggressive policies.
With the change of government in Poland in December 2023, Orbán has also lost his most important partner. Although Poland has always been one of the loudest warners of Moscow’s policies, Warsaw has always backed Budapest in disputes with the EU Commission and the ECJ from 2015 to 2023. That is now over.
On Friday, a weakened Orbán will visit Chancellor Scholz in Berlin. He is likely to warn his Hungarian counterpart to keep Europe’s interests in mind, particularly in the coming months, and especially on the major issues of global trade, migration and, not least, support for Ukraine. The Hungarian government will take over the EU Council Presidency for six months on July 1. It therefore has an important role to play as a link between individual EU states and negotiations at EU level. At the same time, it could, if it wanted to, block or slow down certain processes.
According to Daniel Hegedüs, Hungary expert at the German Marshall Fund (GMF) think tank, the meeting will focus on European policy rather than bilateral issues. “Before the start of the Hungarian Council Presidency, Orbán wants to personally assure Scholz that his government will not deviate from the norm and will shape the Council Presidency in the interests of the EU. The most important thing here is the portfolio of EU enlargement to include Moldova or Georgia and, of course, Ukraine,” he told WELT AM SONNTAG.
Andreas Bock of the ECFR stresses that the Western Balkans are also a priority for Orbán. “Orbán is concerned with bringing his friend Vucic into the EU,” he says. Like Orbán, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is pursuing a kind of “multi-vector” foreign policy in which he is moving closer to Russia and China.
The example of Serbia shows that Orbán still has some allies in Europe, even if, according to the Financial Times, the Bucharest 9, a group of nine East Central and Southeast European states, have just considered excluding Hungary. The reason: Budapest is said to have blocked the forum’s Ukraine policy. “In terms of foreign policy, Hungary is not completely isolated in Europe,” says Hegedüs. “This is mainly due to Slovakia, which follows the Hungarian line, even if not always so clearly.”
“Orbán is probably also trying to make Scholz an ally in releasing billions of EU funds for Hungary. It is questionable whether he will succeed in doing this,” said expert Bock.
