Hungarian Conservative

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held talks with his Romanian counterpart Marcel Ciolacu on Friday, a day before Orbán’s speech at Tusványos. The discussions focused on bilateral relations between the two countries and Romania’s accession to the Schengen Area.

The overwhelming majority of Hungarians support transparency in the foreign funding of media outlets. Recently, there has been an increase in foreign attempts to interfere in Hungarian domestic politics, with the media being a primary target. In response, the government established the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty. This move, however, could prompt Brussels to penalize the country with another rule of law mechanism.

After Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated on Wednesday that Ukraine was ready to negotiate with Russia if Moscow ‘acts in good faith’, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded on Thursday that Russia was willing to negotiate with Ukraine even if Volodymyr Zelenskyy remains president. Viktor Orbán’s peace mission has undoubtedly contributed to these positive developments towards peace, and the Hungarian Prime Minister could play a crucial role in mediating further talks.

For the fourth consecutive year, the European Commission has published its annual report on the rule of law, which comes with few surprises. In addition to Hungary, Brussels is now concerned about the rule of law in Slovakia and Italy, which is unsurprising given that both Member States have governments prioritizing national interests. Poland, on the other hand, has fallen off the EU’s ‘bad guy’ list since Brussels’ favourite, Donald Tusk, came to power. This year’s report leads to a single conclusion: the Commission views the rule of law as a tool for political and financial blackmail.

Balázs Orbán, the political director for the Hungarian Prime Minister, participated in a panel discussion at this year’s Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp. He spoke about the current state of the European right, Viktor Orbán’s peace mission, and Hungarian foreign policy strategy. He mentioned that the Patriots for Europe political group, co-founded by Viktor Orbán, will be expanded in the near future, but he did not specify who the new members might be.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated that Ukraine is ready to negotiate with Russia if Moscow acts in good faith, following his meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. Kuleba’s visit to China sheds new light on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission: Orbán could play an important role in organizing the next peace conference, where Kyiv would welcome Russia’s participation.

As is the case every year, the speech of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will be the main event of the Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp, commonly known as Tusványos. The speech delivered here has become one of Orbán’s most significant yearly addresses in recent times, offering political guidance with his insights and, in many cases, accurately predicting future geopolitical events.

Mainstream political groups in the European Parliament have once again defied the will of the electorate, preventing Patriots for Europe (PfE), the EP’s third largest group, from gaining top jobs in parliamentary committees. Kinga Gál, PfE’s First Vice-Chairman, stated that they will challenge the decision at the Conference of Presidents and did not rule out taking the case to the EU’s top court.

After a long time, Europe has the opportunity to take its future into its own hands, restore its long-lost prestige, and promote peace in Ukraine. Instead, Brussels has initiated a childish vendetta against Hungary over Viktor Orbán’s peace mission. Missing such opportunities out of hubris and pettiness demonstrates the utter incompetence of the EU leadership.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary is among the featured speakers at the annual Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp, better known by its colloquial name Tusványos, as per tradition. The event is taking place from 23–28 July in Tusnádfürdő (Băile Tușnad), Transylvania, Romania.

The poll results concerning the perceived suitability of political leaders for the prime ministerial position are revealing: among potential candidates for a parliamentary election, Viktor Orbán is considered the most suitable to lead Hungary by 49 per cent of Hungarians.

‘Hungary is the tell-tale sign that legal norms and moral niceties have fallen prey to corrosive ideologies, but other would-be leaders who attended CPAC this year and were inspired by its statesmanlike example should not be fooled. If they win, they are next.’

Balázs Orbán, the political director of the Hungarian Prime Minister, discussed Viktor Orbán’s peace mission and its impact in a lengthy post on X. He wrote: ‘The winds of change are upon us; it’s time for European leaders to overcome years of war psychosis!’

Italian antifascist-attacker-turned-MEP Ilaria Salis was quick to criticize Hungary in her very first post on X as a member of the European Parliament, accusing Budapest of not having guaranteed her fundamental rights due to her political beliefs as an antifascist while she was in custody and under house arrest. Zoltán Kovács, Hungarian State Secretary for International Communication and Relations, responded by calling on Salis’ defenders to ‘stop whitewashing a communist terrorist who led a group that almost killed someone on the streets of Budapest in broad daylight.’

Despite the series of peace plans formulated over the last years, the positions of the presidents of the warring nations, Zelenskyy and Putin still look irreconcilable. As Prime Minister Orbán highlighted on numerous occasions, however, ‘peace won’t happen of its own accord’ and ‘without dialogue it is very difficult to see how they will move in the direction of peace’.

‘An important element of Viktor Orbán’s governance is that he knows Hungarian history and has learned from its mistakes. He does not want to repeat the sins committed by the historic Hungarian state during the 20th century. Hungary’s vision has thus not been blinded by the anti-Zionism of woke ideology, and it is able to recognize that Israel is the bastion of democracy and human rights in the Middle East, while successfully holding on to its religious and national traditions.’

‘Thanks be to God He did not let them kill him,’ said the Hungarian prime minister in his regular public radio interview this morning. Viktor Orbán expressed hope that this means God has plans for the president.

After some details had been circulating in the press for days, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán decided to release his ten-point proposal and assessment he had sent to the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, following his peace mission. The document is the most detailed plan for achieving peace in Ukraine that has ever been made public since the war broke out in February 2022.

‘In his convention speech, Vance challenged the globalist idea that nations are a thing of the past. After telling a powerful story about how seven generations of his family are buried on the side of a Kentucky mountain, Vance said, “That is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.” This should resonate with Hungarians who support Prime Minister Orbán’s fight to protect Hungarian sovereignty and culture from the internationalists of Brussels and Davos.’

Viktor Orbán has been receiving increasing praise from Germany in recent days—something that has not happened for a long time. Henryk M. Broder, a columnist for the German newspaper Die Welt, lauded the Hungarian Prime Minister for his peace mission, stating that, seeing the EU’s failure, Orbán has taken Europe’s fate into his own hands and is doing so quite skillfully. Additionally, a left-wing German MP remarked that Orbán’s peace mission justifies why the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.

An opinion piece by the Washington, D.C.-based magazine The Atlantic is trying to make the case that Donald Trump’s victory in November could bring a ‘Hungary-style autocracy’ to America. Evidently, this is nothing new, just a usual hit piece by the liberal media in the US with the customary distortions, omissions, and half-truths.

On 18 July the European Parliament re-elected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen with 401 votes in favour. In her speech before the vote, von der Leyen made numerous political promises for the next five years but also, of course, criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission.

While left-wing EU politicians are trying to organize a boycott of Hungary’s presidency of the EU Council, Chancellor Karl Nehammer of Austria has stated that he and the ministers of his party is not willing to take part in it, and vowed they will ‘continue to participate in sessions and meetings of the EU Council Presidency’.

The majority of Hungarians agree with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian government in not supporting Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as President of the European Commission. The vote in the European Parliament will take place on Thursday, 18 July, but it is far from certain that the current president will secure the 361 votes needed for re-election.

The left-wing, pro-war majority in the European Parliament refused to vote in favour of a proposal by Patriots for Europe (PfE) to condemn the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump. ‘Their intolerance forms the basis for politically motivated violence and threatens our democratic institutions,’ PfE First Vice-Chairman Kinga Gál pointed out after the vote.

The news of the assassination attempt against former US President Donald Trump had barely reached Hungary before hateful comments calling for the death of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán appeared in the comments sections of liberal media. Máté Kocsis, the parliamentary group leader of Hungary’s governing party, Fidesz, called for immediate action against all forms of incitement to violence.

The Hungarian Defence Forces are set to receive a total of sixteen medium-lift rotary-wing aircraft from Airbus Helicopters, as part of the government’s force development programme.

Vance is serving his first term in Congress as a Senator from Ohio, winning his seat in the 2022 midterm elections. The former marine and venture capitalist, whose 2016 autobiography Hillbilly Elegy became a bestseller and was even made into a film, is quite knowledgeable about and apparently appreciative of several policies of the Hungarian government.

All indications suggest that Brussels simply cannot get over Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission. In the latest development, 63 MEPs have written an open letter to EU leaders, urging them to strip Hungary of its voting rights in response to the prime minister’s ‘rogue’ diplomacy. Additionally, the European Commission has instructed its commissioners to skip informal ministerial meetings organized by the Hungarian EU presidency.

Shortly after assuming the presidency of the European Union, Viktor Orbán visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, followed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, to facilitate the end of the Russo-Ukrainian war.