PM Orbán: ‘I expect overwhelming election victory’

There is a pro-war coalition ruling in Europe, they are the ones calling the shots in politics, on the economy as well as on defence, and this is very bad for Europe, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview broadcast on the “Patriota” Youtube channel on Wednesday.

Orbán forging peace

In the interview, Orbán said he was expecting a large-scale victory of his Fidesz party at next year’s parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, the prime minister said that “all Europe’s problems” such as economic stagnation, high inflation and high food and energy prices were rooted in the war in Ukraine.

Orbán noted his visits to Ukraine, Russia, China, and the US a year ago aimed at forging a peace initiative but said he had been “rejected” in Kyiv. Orbán said Zelensky had introduced a new type of “influencer politician, an actor, or comedian”. He added that Zelensky’s prior experience was “not helping with what he has to do now, especially not in the midst of war.” According to Orbán Zelensky is “acting out a president” and the two had “not succeeded in discussing deeper context”.

Orbán said the latest NATO summit had revealed a division over the matter, with the United States and Europe being on strategically different paths. “America is on the peace path, while we are on that of war,” Orbán said. The US, he said, had warned the belligerents that unless they were ready to cooperate, they would be left on their own.

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Europe wants to continue the war

The prime minister warned that Europe could be left alone to grapple with all negative financial, economic, and security consequences of the war. He said all parties should understand that “a ceasefire and peace are the way to the future”. But, he added, Europe “wants to continue the war and Ukraine also thinks that if Europe finances them it is worth going on.” And Russia “sees that there is no understanding, so they will go ahead once they have made so much sacrifice for the military actions so far,” he added. “Everybody is more interested in the war and not so much in peace,” Orban said.

“The war cannot be won in the battlefield; it can only be concluded through diplomacy … there will be a ceasefire and peace if there is a personal meeting between the presidents of Russia and the US,” Orban said. In the absence of personal talks between the two, the war could go on “for long, long months”, he added.

If one were to draw a map on who is who in this geopolitical situation, then Turkey, the US, Slovakia and Hungary are on the side of peace, and the remaining twenty-five countries in Europe are on the pro-war side, he said.

Ukraine must be prevented from “coming into” the EU

Ukraine has the right to decide on its own future, but they cannot expect us to help them in a failed strategy, Orbán said. And continuing the war, which they have the right to do, is something that is bad for Europe and could have terrible consequences for Hungary, he added.

Ukraine must be prevented from “coming into” the EU, Orbán said, adding that he had vetoed Ukraine’s endeavours on basis of the Voks2025 referendum. He was asked if Hungary’s veto could be “bypassed” and he said it was not possible legally, but added that “Brussels is openly in violation of the law … it is not impossible that they could get around us temporarily”. He suggested, however, that the the EU “cannot afford passing the final decision on Ukraine’s accession without unanimous consent.”

The prime minister said there would be a bitter moment when European leaders – with the exception of Hungary and Slovakia – would have to admit that they had been pursuing the wrong strategy. This war has already been lost by the European Union, and even though they are holding the front line, it has also been lost by Ukraine, he said.

Overwhelming election victory

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said he was expecting an overwhelming election victory of his Fidesz party in 2026, a “landslide win in a fair fight”. Orbán said it was “nothing new” that the government’s adversaries “using funds and on instruction received from abroad” were trying to “herd together” opposition voters and others not supportive of the government, but “the challenge is not presented in the form of a classic political party but a digital movement”.

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“Politics is a humane thing; all kinds of characters cannot win … you cannot build a party on crime or infidelity, or a community on treachery; you can, but only temporarily, because it will fall apart anyway,” Orbán said. He said his party would win because it has “hundreds, even thousands of local leaders that are known in the community … and the people know what their strengths and weaknesses are.”

“It is based on the very strong position held in real life” that Fidesz can achieve a result similar to that of 2022 at the next parliamentary election, Orbán said.

Virtue, ability, knowledge, experience

On former justice minister Judit Varga, Orbán said she tendered her resignation three times in her last year in office, “simply because she could not deal with the abusive relationship she was in,” and then “she was swept away” by the case of the presidential pardon. He said politics was built on characters and history mattered when it came to characters. “And we have been breathing together with this country since 1988, when Fidesz was founded, everyone is well known, everyone has had a development, a career, a performance, strengths and weaknesses, and I think this is unbeatable,” he said.

What has been accumulated on the government side historically: virtue, ability, knowledge, experience – and, of course, weakness – cannot be beaten by any new formation, he argued. It may not take forever, but it would take the work of many years to become competitive with this, Orbán said. Currently, “war is raging in half the world,” there are economic difficulties, at times like this, you cannot take a risk, in such a situation, the most important abilities are those that only experience can bring, he said.

On former chief of staff Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, Orbán said he was the Tisza Party’s candidate for defence minister, who praises Ukraine and who receives instructions from abroad on what the position should be on certain military issues.

Orbán also pointed out that in the military, leadership by example was important; the army is a place for serious people, so it is simply impossible for the army to be led by a general who was affected by liposuction.

Bureaucrats in Brussels

In Hungary, the commander-in-chief of the army was not the prime minister, he said. “Therefore, the matter of who the chief-of-staff is, how to appoint him, whom to consult, these are complicated issues, and such accidents can happen,” Orbán said, referring to the appointment of Ruszin-Szendi.

Answering the question of why the Tisza Party voted in Brussels against allowing farmers to receive irrigation water for free, Orbán pointed out that there were bureaucrats, not patriots, in Brussels.

Brussels is an imperial centre, where the general perception is that it is good for the economy if the functioning of the market is not distorted by national intervention, he said. So if the question is whether the water should be provided for free, the answer in Brussels is that everyone should pay because that is how it should be on the market according to the textbooks, he said.

It is another matter that Brussels bureaucrats can control national politicians as it is in the case of DK or the Tisza Party. “I am not criticising Tisza, I am not saying that it wants to harm the farmers. But they have a master, they have an order, which they have to follow,” Orbán said, indicating that this is the difference between a national party and one controlled by Brussels.

Main issues: migration, war, gender

Orbán said the three main issues of European life were migration, war and gender, noting that only one country had so far dared to ask the opinions of its citizens on these three issues. In Hungary, there has been a referendum on the war, on family protection as well as on migration, and no other country has done this so far, he said.

He said there was a system of domination between Brussels and the national governments subordinated to Brussels, where European citizens are simply excluded from being able to decide on the most important issues. If there were a referendum on migration, the position would be roughly the same as it was in Hungary, similarly on the gender issue, and soon it will be the same on the war as well. So if Europeans could decide, there would be no war, but there would be family protection, and there would be no migration either, he said.

This is why it matters whether a country is headed by a national government or one controlled by Brussels, the prime minister concluded.

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