Hungarian Conservative

‘France is organized in a way that prevents a patriotic, nationalist force from taking power. This is the essence of the French system. The media, the judiciary, public servants, business, entertainment, and so on: virtually all layers of society have been taken over by left-leaning representatives since the 1970s to such an extent that a change of direction would inevitably lead to violent clashes, especially given the openly anti-French rhetoric of large parts of NFP supporters. Palestinian flags were more numerous than French ones at many anti-RN protests.’

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán travelled to Florida for the fifth stop of his peace mission, where he was received by former US President Donald Trump. Trump thanked Orbán for his efforts, stating that peace must be brought about as quickly as possible, as many lives have been lost in a war that should never have started.

Just as in the presidential debate, Joe Biden failed to deliver an acceptable performance in his ‘big boy’ press conference this morning. The voices of discontent within the Democratic Party are growing louder. Whether the current president should step aside and hand his presidential candidacy to Vice President Kamala Harris remains to be seen in the coming days.

The New Popular Front, an electoral alliance including the far left, has won the second round of the French National Assembly elections. Despite finishing third, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is the real winner of the elections, with the right-wing party becoming France’s largest party, strengthening its position in parliament, and looking ahead to the 2027 presidential elections with good chances.

‘The left and progressives are following the same strategy everywhere in Europe. Scholz, in 2023, said he hoped to naturalize two million immigrants and soften the immigration law to attract up to 400,000 non-EU immigrants. In Spain we experienced it a few months ago, when the fact of regularizing half a million people was supported with the positive vote of all parties except Vox. The real problem will emerge when these illegal immigrants start to create their parties and win elections.’

‘The worst thing that can happen right now in France is the disunity of the right-wing parties, because if they stand united, they really have the best opportunity ever to change the course. It is not going to be an easy task, after a forty-year inaction in which even bringing up the issue of illegal immigration and insecurity was outright branded as extreme right-wing rhetoric. Albeit this is still happening, it is having less and less effect on a large part of the right-wing electorate, as they have got used to the labelling, and now even mock it.’

Snap elections in France, the Belgian Prime Minister resigning, and the German coalition government in turmoil—all happening in the wake of the European elections. Even though the elections, billed as crucial, did not bring the right-wing turnaround many had hoped for, the right-wing parties, almost without exception, performed well, causing panic among the liberal elite in Western Europe.

‘If Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni manage to work together, either in a group or in a coalition, they will be the strength of Europe,’ stated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in an interview with Le Point. PM Orbán also discussed the Hungarian EU Presidency starting in July, the threats facing Europe and his relationship with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Former US President Donald Trump, the current Republican presidential candidate, spoke about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a recent interview, praising the latter’s pro-peace stance on the war in Ukraine. Pro-peace voices are needed more than ever in Europe, as Western leaders prepare for the crucial June elections amid a state of war psychosis.

According to Fanni Lajkó, an analyst at the Center for Fundamental Rights, Europe faces two paths in the upcoming June elections: succumbing to pro-war views or rising up to restore the European Union’s original mission as a peace project. The institute held a press conference on Friday, where the Director of EU Research, Attila Kovács, and Fanni Lajkó shared their insights on the latest lead candidate debate.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is in a stable but very serious condition after he was shot at point-blank range by a 71-year-old perpetrator, described as a poet and political activist in media reports, on Wednesday afternoon. The international community responded with shock to the news of the attempted assassination, as world leaders expressed their support for Slovakia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin supports Beijing’s four-point peace plan for Ukraine, presented in April. However, peace seems further away than ever since the war’s outbreak, as Western leaders have adopted an increasingly aggressive stance ahead of the European elections.

The President of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs outlined that while the European economy was sluggish in recent years, Hungary was able to continue to grow its foreign direct investments, in large part thank to its relations with China. The author believes that this approach would be advisable to follow for the whole of the European continent as well.

Despite the increasingly hawkish rhetoric from President Emmanual Macron of France, the French Ambassador to Russia did attend President Vladimir Putin’s fifth inauguration. So did Ambassador Konkoly of Hungary, and the envoys of four other EU countries as well.

‘Our continent is effectively under siege—we can see that if we are willing to move away from the narratives that interpret migration solely as a ‘refugee issue’ and acknowledge that mass migration can also be a tool for terrorism and destabilization. The number of irregular migrants arriving in the Canary Islands more than tripled in January this year compared to the previous year. Germany is overwhelmed. Reception capacity was already exceeded in 2023, when 330,000 asylum applications were submitted in just a year, mostly from Muslim countries.’

‘Schmitt’s thought becomes particularly relevant in understanding how governments define the parameters of inclusion and exclusion in their responses to the pandemic. Schmitt’s theories provide a realistic framework for analysing such complex political issues, and understanding such a critical perspective might encourage visible improvements in liberal legal and political systems.’

Hungary has persistently advocated for a shift in the EU’s agricultural policy towards Ukraine. The prolonged farmer protests have influenced the stance of other member states, with France spearheading a coalition of states seeking to enforce stricter trade restrictions on Ukrainian agricultural products.

‘Strategic uncertainty is not a universal elixir, but merely one of the tools in a politician’s and a strategist’s toolbox. It is important to know when to use it, but it is perhaps even more important to know when not to. For strategic uncertainty to be an effective tool, serious kinetic action must sometimes be added to the bluffing and the show of force.’

The major polling firm Századvég found that 88 per cent of Hungarians oppose sending NATO troops to Ukraine like President Emmanuel Macron of France suggested. Also, 80 per cent of responders believe it is unlikely that Russia would attack Hungary if they were to be successful in Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron has captured the attention of the international community with his increasingly bold pro-war statements recently. What could be the intentions driving Macron’s rhetoric?

The Hungarian foreign minister appeared on a public radio programme on Sunday, and rebutted the statement by President Macron of France, per which he did not rule out deploying NATO troops in defence of Ukraine, pointing out that it is ‘diametrically opposed to joint decisions taken till now’.

Following Emmanuel Macron’s statement on sending Western troops to Ukraine, NATO allies are distancing themselves from the French President. In the run-up to the European elections, radical pro-war rhetoric may have serious consequences—the case of the Hungarian opposition in the 2022 parliamentary elections is a cautionary tale.

Orbán told public radio that Hungary only consented to financial contributions allocated towards efforts to prevent the collapse of the Ukrainian state at the Thursday Council meeting. He said peace was the crucial issue as regards the war between Russia and Ukraine but ‘the situation is not good in this respect, since Brussels is suffering from war fever’.

The Prime Minister expressed concern about the lack of proper respect for agriculture as a crucial element of the European economy within the European Union. He criticized unfavourable regulations imposed in several countries, making the situation difficult for farmers.

Similarly to the French president, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck also spoke sharply in his assessment of Europe’s place and competitiveness. In his view, the progress made in the first decades of the existence of the EU has made Europe complacent, ignoring the pace of development in the US and Asia, as a result of which it is far behind its competitors today.

Europe’s left-wing-led countries are being plunged into chaos due to irresponsible political decisions. A situation is beginning to unfold in the West that would be unimaginable in Hungary.

Emmanuel Macron will preside over the national tribute ceremony for Jacques Delors at the courtyard of the Invalides Cathedral in Paris on Friday morning.

The root cause of the riots result from the French state having been unable to eliminate social inequalities and ethnic differences for decades, the panellists at a Migration Research Institute discussion agreed.

In 2017, the recent France riots were seemingly foreshadowed by the Foreign Minister of the UAE, who said: ‘There will come a day that we will see far more radical extremists and terrorists coming out of Europe because of lack of decision making, trying to be politically correct, or assuming that they know the Middle East and they know Islam and others far better than we do. I’m sorry, but that’s pure ignorance.’

PM Orbán must have ‘run into’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the meeting, as some Hungarian media put it. However, conspicuously, Viktor Orbán did not post any photos of him and the Ukrainian leader to social media, as opposed to prominently featured pictures with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in a Facebook post. In fact, no formal meeting has been held between the two leaders since Zelenskyy entered office. Although Orbán has been invited to Kyiv, the Hungarian government has made it quite clear that the Hungarian PM will not be travelling to Ukraine unless the rights of the Hungarian minority in the country are restored.