Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán hosted Alice Weidel, co-chair of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), at the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest on Monday. The leader of the German right-wing party visited Hungary to deliver a lecture titled ‘Germany and Europe’ at the Várkert Bazár.
‘It is important that we not only promote partnership and friendship in Europe, but also put them into practice,’ Weidel wrote on X following the meeting.
In her lecture, Weidel emphasized that the nation remains the foundation of state policy and a prerequisite for democracy in the 21st century. She stated that in Germany, the political mainstream has chained itself to power, while the will of the citizens is being suppressed. She pointed to the multiple crises facing Europe’s former economic powerhouse as a result of flawed leadership—from uncontrolled, mass illegal migration and rising crime rates to deteriorating public safety and weakening competitiveness.
‘We are ready to take on the responsibility of governing,’ Weidel declared firmly. AfD is currently the largest party in Germany according to polls, leading the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) by around two percentage points. The party recently broke its polling record in Saxony-Anhalt, achieving 40 per cent support.
Weidel also expressed gratitude to Viktor Orbán for his efforts in promoting peace. ‘There is no better place in the world than Budapest,’ she said, referring to the upcoming peace summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Hungarian capital.
Orbán is one of Weidel’s highest-ranking allies, as AfD remains under a cordon sanitaire imposed by mainstream forces both in Germany and across Europe. This isolation has drawn strong criticism from the Trump administration, which has repeatedly accused Western Europe of drifting away from the core values of the transatlantic alliance—particularly freedom of speech and Christianity. These concerns culminated in Vice President JD Vance’s Munich speech earlier in 2025, in which he sharply criticized European leaders for their intolerance toward conservative parties.
Orbán previously received Weidel on 12 February 2025—two days before Vance’s speech—for the first time in Budapest, marking a historic moment for AfD, as no foreign leader had hosted the party’s co-chair before. In a joint press conference following that meeting, Orbán described Weidel and AfD as the ‘future of Germany’, just two weeks before the snap elections in which the CDU ultimately prevailed. The two also gave a joint interview to the Swiss newspaper Weltwoche and the Hungarian weekly Mandiner.
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