Normally, a Hungarian would not care much about a debate between two French politicians, especially if neither of them is anywhere near forming a government in the coming years. However, during last week’s televised debate between right-wing Éric Zemmour and socialist Raphaël Glucksmann, we heard such heavily distorted statements about Hungary that they require clarification.
The highly tense debate—at times devolving into shouting—took place on Tuesday and marked the opening of the campaign for next year’s municipal elections in France. During the debate, Glucksmann accused Zemmour of being a ‘lackey’ of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and Russian president Vladimir Putin. According to the socialist MEP, a true French patriot cannot befriend Orbán.
Glucksmann went further, claiming that Orbán—because of his good relationship with Chinese president Xi Jinping—is responsible for the decline of the French car industry and the closure of Renault plants, alleging that Chinese companies are relocating factories from France to Hungary.
‘Glucksmann painted a bleak and wholly distorted picture of Hungary’
At one point, screaming at the top of his lungs, Glucksmann painted a bleak and wholly distorted picture of Hungary, declaring that there are no elections in the country and that ‘militias roam the streets suppressing diversity’.
Ordinarily, one would not care much about what a socialist thinks of our country, especially when he is clearly recycling the biased talking points of the liberal-progressive mainstream about Hungary. However, Glucksmann’s claims were so outrageous—and so factually incorrect—that they cannot go unanswered.
Hungary is preparing for a parliamentary election in 2026. There is no political will within the Orbán government to cancel the vote. In fact, the 2026 election is shaping up to be one of the most significant contests of the past 15 years, with Orbán and the governing Fidesz party facing a real challenger in the form of the TISZA party. Western election observers often criticize aspects of Hungary’s electoral system, particularly the compensation mechanism that favours the winning party, but they have never claimed that elections in Hungary are not free or democratic.
As for the alleged ‘militias’ roaming the streets suppressing diversity, we must remind Mr Glucksmann that Europe’s largest Pride—as organizers like to call it—was held in Hungary this year, and despite participants breaching the assembly law, authorities allowed the event to proceed peacefully. In fact, Mr Glucksmann took part in the Budapest Pride himself.
There was indeed a time, however, when aggressive militants marched through Budapest attacking innocent people and nearly killing them. In 2023, a group of German and Italian Antifa militants assaulted several Hungarians in the capital simply because they judged them to be right-wing based on their appearance. One of those militants is now a Member of the European Parliament, Ilaria Salis—and Mr Glucksmann’s parliamentary group, S&D, voted against lifting Salis’s immunity in October 2025.
Zemmour, an ally of Viktor Orbán, countered Glucksmann’s claims by arguing that Hungary is in fact safer than France because it said no to mass migration back in 2015. ‘In Hungary, there is no little Lola dismembered by an Algerian woman. In Hungary, there is no Thomas murdered by a shaïd. There is no Philippine raped and butchered by someone who should have been deported. There is no little Elias killed by an African man on his way home from football practice.’ Elias was a French Jewish youth murdered with a machete by immigrant-background youths; Philippine was a French girl killed by a Moroccan man.
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