BRUSSELS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0European Union leaders are holding a summit in Brussels on Thursday without Hungarian politician Viktor Orb\u00e1n for the first time in 16 years. <\/p>\n
Prime ministers, chancellors and presidents have come and gone, but Orb\u00e1n has been a stable fixture in Brussels\u2019 halls of power, piloting Europe\u2019s drift to the right. He has pioneered a brand of nationalist populism that has found growing success on the continent and is idolized by the Make America Great Again movement in the U.S. <\/p>\n
Orb\u00e1n, who is now Hungary\u2019s leading opposition figure, had repeatedly clashed with the EU as he vilified its institutions and leaders and broke regulations as he hollowed out institutional checks and balances in Hungary.<\/p>\n
Long a foil to EU ambitions in Ukraine and beyond, the former Hungarian prime minister, who lost a pivotal election in April, is now sitting on the sidelines for the first time in a generation \u2014 and watching as his successor P\u00e9ter Magyar joins leaders including Spain\u2019s Pedro Sanchez, France\u2019s Emmanuel Macron and Germany\u2019s Friedrich Merz as they advance policies likely at odds with Orb\u00e1n\u2019s vision. <\/p>\n
As the EU summit opened to discuss ramping up support for Ukraine, among other things, Orb\u00e1n was surrounded by his far-right allies from his new position outside the halls of power he once roamed.<\/p>\n
Orb\u00e1n was in the Belgian capital to take part in a Thursday summit of his Patriots for Europe party group, a collection of far-right parties from across the bloc that forms the third-largest caucus in the European Parliament. <\/p>\n
Sidelined, but among family<\/p>\n
Orb\u00e1n\u2019s bruising election loss was welcomed with relief by many EU leaders and viewed by many observers as a rebuke of his combative approach to the EU and close ties to Russia. Even so, he has remained steadfast in his belief that far-right parties in Europe are on the verge of a breakthrough. <\/p>\n
Orb\u00e1n told a news conference in Brussels on Wednesday that his election defeat had not interrupted \u201cthe rise of patriotic political organizations, communities and parties across Europe.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cNo one election loss can stop this historical process,\u201d he said. \u201cAnti-migration and sovereigntist political forces in Europe will continue to grow stronger in the coming months and years.\u201d <\/p>\n
Orb\u00e1n hopes the Patriots for Europe will be a vehicle for transforming the EU to his vision, for example, by decreasing the bloc\u2019s purview in matters of rule of law and democracy, taking a zero-tolerance approach to immigration and steering toward deeper cooperation with Russia and China. <\/p>\n
He had been the primary impediment to the EU\u2019s efforts to draw Ukraine into the bloc. But Hungary\u2019s new government, led by Magyar and his center-right Tisza party, has pledged more constructive cooperation with the EU. <\/p>\n
Last week Hungary lifted its veto on beginning Ukraine\u2019s accession process after weeks of negotiations with Kyiv on restoring minority rights for ethnic Hungarians in western Ukraine. <\/p>\n
\u201cHungary obviously had issues that they were able to resolve to allow this to happen this week,\u201d said Thomas Byrne, Minister for European Affairs for Ireland, which will take the rotating EU presidency in July for six months. During that time, accession talks are slated to accelerate for Ukraine and Moldova, among others. <\/p>\n
An ambitious far right<\/p>\n
Europe\u2019s far right has indeed scored some recent successes. France\u2019s National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, gained ground in municipal elections earlier this year, while Alternative for Germany (AfD) is performing increasingly well in polls. The populist leader of the Czech Republic, Orb\u00e1n ally Andrej Babis, returned as prime minister last year and is now the only Patriots member who leads an EU-member nation. <\/p>\n
They were able to deeply reform the EU\u2019s migration policy, too, because of an alliance with the center-right European People\u2019s Party. Human rights groups fiercely criticized the measures for increasing the bloc\u2019s surveillance authorities, ramping up deportations of migrants, and the setting up of detention centers outside the EU dubbed \u201creturn hubs.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the right-wing coalition won the vote to pass the migration reform on Wednesday, far-right and center-right lawmakers broke out in cheers inside the European Parliament chamber in Strasbourg, France.<\/p>\n
\u201cSend them back,\u201d they chanted.<\/p>\n
Geert Wilders, the firebrand Dutch ally of Orb\u00e1n, said the victory reflects the ongoing power of the far right.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are still very powerful indeed,\u201d he said to reporters before the Patriots meeting. \u201cThe influence is only growing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Orb\u00e1n\u2019s loss has not curbed the right-wing populists\u2019 momentum, said Gabriela Greilinger, a researcher at the University of Georgia in the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cFar-right parties remain strong in several European countries and will continue to be electorally successful, whether or not Orb\u00e1n is in power,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Still, fractures have emerged within Europe\u2019s far right stemming from discomfort over the United States and Israel\u2019s war in Iran as well as President Trump\u2019s threats to annex Greenland, a territory held by EU member Denmark. <\/p>\n
And now that Orb\u00e1n can no longer veto EU decisions \u2014 a tactic that increasingly defined his role at the bloc\u2019s summits \u2014 Ukraine\u2019s main obstacle to beginning the process of joining the EU has been taken off the table. <\/p>\n
Spike and McNeil write for the Associated Press. Spike reported from Budapest, Hungary. AP writer Sylvain Plazy contributed to this report from Brussels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0European Union leaders are holding a summit in Brussels on Thursday without Hungarian politician Viktor Orb\u00e1n for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[1050,18,13671,89,383,69,13669,115,326,13670,1870,4233,2369,10321,88],"class_list":["post-22206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-bloc","tag-brussels","tag-election-loss","tag-eu","tag-eu-summit","tag-europe","tag-far-right-party","tag-france","tag-hungary","tag-new-leader","tag-orban","tag-patriots","tag-power","tag-right","tag-ukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116771846457900019","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}