Did Orbán lure the EU into a trap?

Probably not since Margaret Thatcher was in office have EU leaders been so outraged with one of their peers as they were last week when Victor Orbán again blocked a critical €90 billion loan to fund Ukraine’s war effort.

Admittedly, the language wasn’t quite as colorful as sometimes used about Britain’s Iron Lady. An exasperated Jacques Chirac once was caught on a mic complaining about Thatcher: “What does she want from me, this housewife? My balls on a plate?”

Nonetheless, there was no disguising the depth of anger at last week’s European Council meeting, with Orbán the villain of the piece as the Hungarian leader stubbornly declined once again to approve the critical financial lifeline for Ukraine. He’d only do so, he said, when Russian oil flows freely to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, damaged in a Russian air attack. Orbán accuses Kyiv of stalling repairs to it; Ukraine’s leader denies this.

“I have never heard such hard-hitting criticism at an EU summit of anyone, ever,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters later.

Maddened though they may be with Orbán, some of his most fervent European critics worry that EU leaders fell into a trap he carefully baited and perfectly timed for the final stretch of the closely fought Hungarian parliamentary elections. They worry EU leaders inadvertently boosted his electoral chances by ganging up on him and allowing him to portray himself back at home as the only man capable of protecting Hungarian interests, a favorite trope of his. 

“The EU should have waited for the result of the Hungarian election,” French MEP Chloé Ridel told POLITICO. “Orbán is not doing will in the opinion polls. And obviously he’s doing his best to fight until the end, and they should have avoided the confrontation about the Ukrainian loan, delayed the clash and not let him obtain what he clearly wanted,” she added. 

As co-chair of the European Parliament’s Intergroup on Anti-Corruption, Ridel has been an impassioned critic of Orbán and she argues that if he does pull off another election win next month, then the EU should withhold all EU funds for Hungary to punish it for democratic backsliding and explore the nuclear option of stripping an Orbán-led Hungary of its EU voting rights. 

But best to keep quiet for now with the long-serving Hungarian leader’s political dominance in question for the first time in a decade-and-a-half with his Fidesz party trailing rival Péter Magyar’s Tisza party in the opinion polls, she believes. Why play into Orbán’s election script and give him the opportunity to fire up his electoral base and engineer a rally-around-the-flag and possibly persuade swing voters to cast their ballots for Fidesz?

Orbán’s election playbook

Certainly, as he left Brussels after the summit on Friday morning, Orbán didn’t seem crestfallen or rattled by the drubbing. Tellingly he flashed several smiles as he told reporters that all the EU leaders could do was to “make a few threats and then realize that it would not work.” He added: “There was no argument from them against which we did not have a stronger argument. They did not say nice things, but they could not bring up anything that Hungary could be morally, legally, or politically blamed for.” 

All of this is very much out of Orbán’s election playbook, according to Michael Ignatieff, the former Canadian politician. He has observed Hungarian politics up close as professor of history at the Central European University, formerly based in Budapest, until it was forced out by Orbán, and is now headquartered in Vienna.

“There’s always a risk you fall into a trap with Orbán. He’s fighting for his political life,” Ignatieff told POLITICO. But he doesn’t fault EU leaders for the stance they took last week. “I’m in no position to second-guess the Commission or the Council or anybody. The point to remember is that Orbán has run against Brussels Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for 16 years and cashed the checks on Saturday and Sunday. That’s the play, right? I don’t think there’s anything the EU can do one way or the other here. If it plays soft, he’ll still play hard,” he added.

Orbán’s four previous election campaigns were all built around the idea of Hungary facing a dark and dangerous external threat, portraying himself as the man of destiny — the only one able to protect the beleaguered country surrounded by conniving enemies.

Those foes have been variously faceless financial masters of the universe, international institutions, transnational left-wing elites and, of course, always the European Union. “We know all too well the nature of the uninvited helping comrades, and we recognize them even when instead of uniforms with epaulettes, they don well-tailored suits,” Orbán said once, when his controversial changes to Hungary’s constitution were challenged by the EU. 

While MAGA heavyweights have not been shy in recent weeks to mobilize to shore up their most loyal European ideological ally — this week Reuters reported that U.S. Vice President JD Vance might be dispatched to Budapest in a bid to give Orbán an electoral lift. But EU leaders had until last week been more circumspect and careful to try to stay above the electoral fray to avoid being accused of election meddling.

‘Pyrrhic victory’

While disputing that Orbán in any way lured EU leaders into a trap, Fidesz MEP András László conceded the clash might well help the Hungarian leader secure a fifth straight term as prime minister. “Mr. Orbán actually kept his word. Isn’t that what every citizen wants from politicians?” And with a touch of sophistry, he told POLITICO: “It was not the reaction of EU partners which could help us in this election, it’s the fact that Mr. Orbán actually stood his ground and did not give in to the pressure.”

László blames Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the clash, arguing that the Ukrainian president is purposefully not repairing the oil pipeline “for political reasons, to meddle in the elections, create chaos, create fear in the hope that Hungarians will turn against Orbán.”

Since the summer, Orbán has gone out his way, of course, to cast Magyar as a puppet of the EU and even a Ukrainian agent of influence who wants to push Hungary into war. The portrayal of Magyar, an MEP, as an instrument of Brussels is false. Tisza MEPs voted in the European Parliament against the €90 billion loan to Ukraine and Magyar is also critical of fast-tracking Kyiv’s application for EU membership.

Nevertheless, Orbán persists in his characterization of Magyar as Brussels’ guy. “In line with Brussels and Kyiv, instead of a national government, they [Tisza] want to bring a pro-Ukrainian government to power in Hungary. That is why they are not standing up for the interests of Hungarian people and Hungary,” Orbán argued in a Facebook post last week.

And with his domination of Hungary’s traditional media, his bundling together of the EU, Magyar and Ukraine as one collective enemy might well be cutting through — at least in the rural districts Orbán needs to hold if he’s to defy his critics and pull off another victory. 

But if he does so off the back of last week’s clash with other EU leaders, it will be a “pyrrhic victory for him,” said Péter Krekó, director of the Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank and political consultancy.

“Orbán can use it in the campaign to demonstrate his fight against Brussels domestically, but if he stays in power the Council will play hardball. It is bad for the EU now, but it will be much worse for Hungary in the middle to long run — if Orbán stays in power,” Krekó told POLITICO.