Hungarian government and Fidesz pin high hopes on second Trump administration
Before the US election last year, one of the main messages of the Hungarian government was that President Donald Trump would bring peace, and now that the new US administration is in office, they believe even more strongly that peace will come under Trump, as they imagined it would:
New world order arising from Trump’s inauguration bypassing Brussels
The European Union is so far blind to new world political order that has arisen with the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Péter Szijjártó, foreign minister, said in Brussels on Monday, adding that liberal leaders of EU member states “are still chanting the same old, failed, harmful mantra”. President Donald Trump “is on the patriotic, sovereigntist, pro-peace, pro-family, anti-migration side,” Szijjártó told a press conference after a meeting of the European Foreign Affairs Council. A ministry statement quoted Szijjártó as saying that Hungary was slated to enjoy a “fantastic year” as “we are the mainstream now”.
He said Trump’s first executive orders were fully in line with Hungarian government policy of the past 14-15 years and “perhaps most importantly, Donald Trump wants peace too”.
The minister said that it had been argued today that Ukraine had received more from the EU than from the United States, and it was also clear that liberal EU leaders “want war in the long term”. “This year they want more” than the 20 billion euros spent on arms for Ukraine in 2024, he said. Delivering more weapons risked escalating the war “and could also complicate” Trump’s peace efforts, he added. European leaders “misunderstand” the nature of cooperation with Washington, he said. “Some speak as if the European Union were the world’s leading power, even though the bloc has lost much of its strength, competitiveness, influence on world politics and the world economy in every respect,” he said. Szijjártó said the EU was incapable of finding the right policy for dealing with the US. By contrast, Hungary “has the same political approach” as the US regarding key issues, he added.
He also blamed European leaders for insisting sanctions are working even when a “recent long presentation” showed how “these measures are being circumvented”, and he accused them of “political blindness”. He said the Polish EU presidency was already working on a new package of sanctions against Russia, the 16th. Hungary, he added, would block any sanctions that “go against Hungary’s strategic and national security interests”, and this meant that the energy sector could not fall under EU sanctions. Szijjártó said several counterparts at today’s meeting raised the possibility of “reviewing previous red lines”, adding that this risked the war’s escalation. “This is the most dangerous, the most worrying statement…” he concluded.
Németh: New US administration raises chances of lasting peace
The chances of lasting peace in the world have grown with the inauguration of the new US administration, the head of the Hungarian parliament’s foreign affairs committee said on the sidelines of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Tuesday.
In his speech as the president of the European Conservatives Group and Democratic Alliance in PACE, Zsolt Németh (Fidesz party) told the assembly that a ceasefire and peace talks in Ukraine were “within reach” thanks to the Trump administration. He welcomed the “flexible stance” of the Ukrainian leadership and expressed hope that President Vladimir Putin would take the same approach. Németh told MTI by phone that Tuesday’s debate on the “new world order and a report on the need to renew the rules-based international order” offered a chance to review changes brought about by the Trump administration. “The new interpretation of domestic security and migration in the US is especially important for the Council of Europe, a humanitarian organisation.
This could have a serious effect on migration, which is an important factor for the CoE,” Németh said. The Trump administration’s conservative values in gender and family policy, and its “classic, conservative interpretation of human rights”, had serious backing in Europe, he said. National sovereignty and the representation of national interests was expected to grow in value in such environment, he said.