The meeting between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary and US President Donald Trump took place a week ago today. However, due to its magnitude, it still provides ample material to talk about. Executive Director Frank Füredi of the conservative think tank MCC Brussels has written an opinion piece about the subject for the Brussels, Belgium-based news site Euractiv, with the title ‘Trump’s Trojan Orbán’.
In it, he argues that the meeting was not just ‘another photo-op for populists’, but a ‘diplomatic slap in the face for Brussels’. It was a bold display of the world’s premier power, completely disregarding the constant moral grandstanding by the European Commission against one of the Member States.
As the author points out, the event took place at an important time for PM Orbán: only a few months away from the Hungarian parliamentary election next April. While the EU is trying to hurt his electoral chances with the continued withholding of EU funds due to Hungary, the President of the United States did not shy away from giving him a ‘guest of honour’ reception.
President Trump also described his guest as someone who is ‘respected by everybody’ and ‘liked by some’, and noted how well PM Orbán’s defiance of EU pressure to let in masses of migrants turned out for him, Füredi wrote, which he believes was ‘a public rebuke of the EU’s own leadership’.
‘Brussels officials will insist the meeting was about trade. True, Hungary left Washington with a US exemption allowing it to keep buying Russian oil despite new energy sanctions. But the more consequential development was political. Behind the scenes, Trump and Orbán appeared to forge a quiet understanding that stretches well beyond commerce,’ Professor Füredi wrote in his piece for Euractiv.
Orbán later described a so-called ‘financial shield’, claiming Washington promised to protect Hungary against any external economic attacks. Füredi interprets this not as a measure against Russia, but as a hedge against Brussels, highlighting how relations between Hungary and the EU have deteriorated from a dispute over democratic norms into a direct contest over sovereignty and influence.
The two leaders also touched on Ukraine, with Trump suggesting he might prefer negotiating directly with Putin in Budapest, Hungary, and praising Orbán’s insight into the Russian president. Füredi notes that this alignment, coupled with their public comments, appeared to mock EU assumptions and underscore Brussels’s diminishing authority.
‘For Orbán, the optics were worth their weight in gold. At home, he can present himself as the man who defied Brussels and found a friend in Washington. For Trump, the encounter served his own narrative: that the so-called liberal world order has collapsed under the weight of its own hypocrisy,’ Füredi concludes in his piece.
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