Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán praised US President Donald Trump for managing the conflict between Israel and Iran with ‘common sense’. ‘The fact that the President of the United States is a man of common sense means that new wars will be shorter, and old wars will run out of fuel,’ Orbán told reporters during the NATO summit in The Hague, the Netherlands.
The ongoing annual meeting of NATO member state leaders is the first since 2019 attended by Donald Trump. His return is widely regarded as triumphant: the ‘12-Day War’ between Israel and Iran ended with a swift ceasefire after Trump ordered US airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities. In addition, NATO member states are expected to agree on raising the defence spending threshold to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035—one of the Trump administration’s primary demands of European allies.
Commenting on the commitment, Orbán stated: ‘Although it is not easy, we are capable of doing it.’ Hungary is among the few member states that have already reached the 2 per cent target, thanks to a decade-long military modernization effort by the government. However, Orbán warned that meeting the 5 per cent goal would require a complete revision of the European Union’s budgetary rules. ‘If the current rules are maintained, no one in the European Union will be able to meet the 5 per cent target,’ he explained. ‘We have to recalculate everything using a different method. In that case, we can do it,’ the prime minister emphasized.
Orbán also addressed the question of Ukraine’s NATO membership, asserting that ‘NATO has no business in Ukraine,’ and noting that neither Ukraine nor Russia is a member of the alliance. ‘It is my job to keep it that way,’ he added.
In response to a journalist’s question, the Hungarian prime minister said that the greatest threat facing Europe today is not related to security. ‘The real threat to Europe at present is the loss of competitiveness. This is the real threat,’ Orbán stressed. ‘Russia does not pose a significant threat. We are much stronger,’ he underlined.
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