If he fails to win a two-thirds majority, which would allow him to change the constitution and undo many of the deeply undemocratic changes Orb\u00e1n has made to Hungary\u2019s political system, Magyar\u2019s hands will also be tied domestically and he may not even be able to deliver on his key campaign promise \u2013 to clean up the systemic corruption that has thrived under Orb\u00e1n. <\/p>\n
But \u2013 while important in itself<\/a> \u2013 the outcome of the elections is almost secondary in a bigger picture of an election campaign that has revealed much about the broader, and increasingly fraught, geopolitical dynamics of European politics. <\/p>\n Orb\u00e1n has been leaning into his close relationship with the US president, Donald Trump. At one level, this is not surprising. Trump has publicly endorsed him twice this year alone \u2013 first in February<\/a> and then again in March<\/a>. The US president also dispatched both his secretary of state, Marco Rubio<\/a>, and vice president, J.D. Vance<\/a>, to Hungary to add weight to his candidacy. <\/p>\n Vance, visiting<\/a> Hungary just days before the elections, praised<\/a> Orb\u00e1n\u2019s governance and leadership style as a model for Europe and attacked the EU<\/a> for trying to influence the outcome of the vote. <\/p>\n Such blatant election interference by the US in a Nato and EU member state is as unprecedented as it is worrying. It signals a new level of determination by the White House to shape alliances with other far-right populists predicated on the vague notion of \u201cmoral cooperation \u2026 and the defence of western civilisation\u201d, as Vance put<\/a> it during his visit to Budapest on April 7.<\/p>\n But while Orb\u00e1n revelled in Washington\u2019s endorsements, his unconditional embrace of Trump is no longer the dominant approach to Washington among many of Europe\u2019s rightwing populist parties. The appeal of the Maga movement is rapidly diminishing in Europe. <\/p>\n While fulsome in their support for Donald Trump for more than a decade, many European rightwing populists have begun to realise the fraught nature of their association with Trump. \u201cAmerica first\u201d is exactly what it says on the tin. Moreover, Trump\u2019s interpretation of what it means makes it even worse for some of his erstwhile supporters. <\/p>\n For Poland\u2019s president, Karol Nawrocki, Trump\u2019s cosy relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin runs counter to the almost universal perception of Russia as the main threat to Polish security<\/a>. For the Danish People\u2019s Party, which sits with the far-right Patriots for Europe<\/a> faction in the European parliament, Trump\u2019s designs on Greenland were so unpalatable that one of its members, Anders Vistisen, told<\/a> the US president to \u201cfuck off\u201d.<\/p>\n For others, like the French Rassemblement National (National Rally)<\/a>, Trump\u2019s tariff threats have affected some of their core constituencies among farmers. Even more so, Trump\u2019s illegal war against Iran, hugely unpopular across European electorates, highlights the electoral liabilities<\/a> of an association with the US president. <\/p>\n This does not make these rightwing populist movements more liberal. They still share a broad resentment of liberalism and what it stands for: open societies, open borders and a commitment to global institutions. But many of these parties have staked their political legitimacy on the defence of the sovereignty of their individual nation states. They are now asking themselves whether this sovereignty is perhaps more threatened by Washington \u2013 and Moscow \u2013 than by Brussels.<\/p>\n The answer to this question will partly be determined by the outcome of Sunday\u2019s elections in Hungary.<\/p>\n A win for Orb\u00e1n would, at a minimum, indicate sufficient desire for an autocratic and illiberal model of governance and at least some residual appeal of an alignment with Trump. But that logic may not prevail for long in the face of the conflict in the Middle East and Russia\u2019s continuing onslaught on Ukraine.<\/p>\n Orb\u00e1n\u2019s close relationship with Putin \u2013 and his persistent obstruction of the EU\u2019s Ukraine policy \u2013 is likely to leave him increasingly isolated, even among otherwise ideologically close rightwing populists. This vulnerability became apparent as early as 2022 when Orb\u00e1n\u2019s long-time ally Jaroslaw Kaczynski, then Polish deputy prime minister, publicly bashed<\/a> his pro-Russian leanings. <\/p>\n Divisions over the EU\u2019s Russia policy have exposed one significant faultline<\/a> among rightwing populist movements across Europe between those seeking accommodation with the Kremlin and those seeking deterrence and containment. The far-right Sweden Democrats, for example, threatened<\/a> to leave the European Conservatives and Reformists parliamentary bloc if Orb\u00e1n\u2019s Fidesz party had been allowed to join. This is precisely because the Hungarian prime minister was seen as too close to Russia.<\/p>\n For these Russia-sceptical parties, Orb\u00e1n\u2019s alignment with Putin is clearly anathema. Trump\u2019s apparently warm relationship with the Russian president is likely to deepen their unease about aligning too closely with the White House. Geographical proximity to Russia and a long history of confrontation with Russia will remain powerful drivers for these parties\u2019 foreign and security policies. <\/p>\n Trump\u2019s endorsement of Orb\u00e1n may thus more effectively accelerate Orb\u00e1n\u2019s isolation among rightwing populists in Europe. This will undermine his agenda of building a powerful coalition of like-minded illiberal leaders eroding the EU from within.<\/p>\n These tensions and contradictions at the heart of a supposedly ideologically well-aligned transatlantic populist right movement predate Hungary\u2019s parliamentary elections and they will outlast them. At a time of almost unprecedented global disorder and uncertainty, the battle for Hungary is both an election campaign and, more broadly, a key episode in the ongoing debate over the meaning of the west as a geopolitical project.<\/p>\n Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The world will be watching on April 12 when Hungarians head to the polls in parliamentary elections that will determine the country\u2019s next prime minister. This may sound exaggerated, but these parliamentary elections are about much more than simply whether the incumbent prime minister, Viktor Orb\u00e1n, will serve another term as Hungary\u2019s leader. His main […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What an Orb\u00e1n victory would mean<\/h2>\n
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