JD Vance has claimed European elections are being manipulated by “corrupt millionaire” bureaucrats in Brussels.
The US vice-president, on a visit to Budapest to support the re-election of Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian premier, accused the European Union (EU) of enriching itself while illegally withholding money from member states.
In some of his most scathing comments on the EU, he urged Hungarians to reject pressure from Brussels and vote for Mr Orbán on Sunday.
Speaking at a rally on Tuesday, Mr Vance criticised the “corruption of Brussels, which has seen bureaucrats become millionaires by threatening and cajoling the sovereignty of the people across this beautiful continent”.
The vice-president said “the bureaucrats and Brussels, those people, should not be listened to” in the election.
“Unlike some of the leadership of Brussels, I’m not threatening you or telling you that we’re going to withhold funds to which you’re legally entitled.”
The EU has frozen around €18bn (£15bn) intended for Hungary over concerns about the erosion of democracy under Mr Orbán’s Right-wing populist government, including high-level corruption and attacks on media independence.
A shirt featuring Mr Trump and Mr Orbán was seen in the crowd as Mr Vance spoke during the ‘Day of Friendship’ event in Budapest – Marton Monus/Reuters
Mr Vance’s visit to Budapest was an 11th-hour intervention before the Hungarian elections, with Mr Orbán trailing Péter Magyar in the polls by between 10 and 20 percentage points.
The vice-president set up Mr Orbán as the saviour of European civilisation, while accusing the EU’s “faceless bureaucrats” of trying to destroy it via unchecked migration and net zero laws.
His attack on Brussels echoed his comments at the Munich Security Conference last year, when he shocked European leaders by upbraiding them for clamping down on free speech.
Mr Orbán, when he introduced the US vice-president at the rally on Tuesday, praised his Munich speech as a “liberating political thesis”.
While urging Hungarians to vote “with no outside forces pressuring you or telling you what to do”, Mr Vance dangled the prospect of trade deals with the US under Mr Orbán.
“In Hungary I actually see real progress under a man named Viktor Orbán. I see a trading partner who will bring in record investment from the United States of America,” he said.
Mr Vance sang the praises of the Right-wing populist leader, saying: ‘In Hungary I actually see real progress under a man named Viktor Orbán’ – Attila KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images
With undisguised contempt for the EU, efforts to bring Hungary’s media and public institutions to the heel of the government, his nationalist politics and fierce loyalty to Donald Trump, Mr Orbán has emerged as a darling of the Maga movement on a continent increasingly at odds with Washington.
Mr Vance telephoned Mr Trump at the start of his speech to address the crowd, but was forced to do so twice when his first call went to voicemail.
When the vice-president held up his phone to the microphone, Mr Trump declared himself a “big fan” of Mr Orbán and said he was “with him all the way”.
“I love Hungary, and I love that Viktor, I’ll tell you, he’s a fantastic man, we’ve had a tremendous relationship,” Mr Trump said.
“Remember this, he didn’t allow people to storm your country and invade your country like other people have, and ruin their countries.”
On a phone call with his vice-president, Mr Trump declared himself a ‘big fan’ of Mr Orbán – Jonathan Ernst/AFP via Getty Images
At a press conference on Tuesday, Mr Vance claimed Mr Trump and Mr Orbán had done more than any other world leaders for peace in Ukraine.
“Your leadership has been a far, far more important and constructive partner for peace than almost anyone, anywhere else in the world,” the vice-president told the Hungarian premier at the event in Budapest.
During his 16-year rule, Mr Orban has forged close ties with Moscow and stoked enmity with Kyiv, stalling much-needed loans for Ukraine worth tens of billions of euros, and stymieing its EU accession.
A leaked call published on Tuesday by Bloomberg, in which Mr Orbán offered to support Vladimir Putin “in any way” because of the pair’s “friendship”, laid bare the Hungarian leader’s rapport with the Kremlin.
He compared himself to a mouse aiding the Russian lion, invoking a fable in which a rodent frees a trapped lion by gnawing through a hunter’s ropes, after the predator had spared its life. According to the transcript, the remark drew a laugh from the Russian president.
‘Golden era’ in US-Hungary relations
Mr Vance’s two-day trip is being billed as the first high-level official US visit in 20 years, although Washington sent Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, to the capital last month to support its flagging ally.
In a no-holds-barred endorsement of the man Mr Trump has called a “great leader”, Mr Vance said: “I want to help as much as I possibly can.” Mr Orbán hailed “a golden era” in US-Hungary relations.
On Tuesday, Mr Magyar appeared to criticise Mr Vance’s visit in a post that said Hungarian history “is not written in Washington, Moscow or Brussels”.
Chastising “bureaucrats in Brussels”, Mr Vance suggested Europe should mimic the energy policy of Hungary, the bloc’s leading consumer of Russian oil.
“It is funny to watch prime ministers and leaders in some of the Western European capitals talk about the energy crisis, when, frankly, they should have been following the policies of Viktor Orbán,” he said.
Hungary has refused to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels and relies on exemptions to import crude via the Druzhba pipeline.
Mr Vance also suggested during the press conference that the seeds of the war in Ukraine had been “planted well before the fighting started” by European energy policy.
Mr Orbán has made energy security a pillar of his campaign and has scapegoated Ukraine in increasingly vitriolic statements which portray the embattled nation as a threat to Hungary’s economy and safety.
During the weekend, he blamed Kyiv after Alexander Vučić, Serbia’s president and an ally of Mr Orbán, said two backpacks with “large packages of explosives” had been left a few hundred metres from a stretch of pipeline transporting Russian natural gas into Hungary.
Kyiv has denied involvement and the Hungarian opposition has accused Mr Orbán of staging a false flag attack to boost his standing in the polls.