For the event, Viktor Orban chose the Puskas Arena, the large stadium named after the legendary football player Ferenc Puskas (1927-2006), which this football enthusiast recently had built in Budapest. On Thursday, November 7, the Hungarian Prime Minister received forty-two European Heads of State and Government, including their counterparts from the European Union (EU), on the occasion of the European Political Community (EPC) summit.
Following Donald Trump’s big victory in the US presidential election and the fall of Olaf Scholz’s coalition in Germany, most leaders present in Budapest had reason to be worried. Especially because, as a senior European official sums it up, “There is no third country that divides Europeans more than the United States”. Caught in the German political crisis, Scholz was not present at Thursday’s EPC summit and did not return to Budapest until the European Council in the afternoon.
In the environment of the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, we also feared the provocations of Viktor Orban, who fervently supported the Republican candidate and many of whose supporters celebrated the fall of the German coalition, which they considered too leftist. But the Hungarian leader finally displayed sobriety, under the smiling gaze of Edi Rama, the Albanian prime minister, who was amused to see “All Europe gathered in the fold of its black sheep”.
In his opening speech, Viktor Orban did not even mention the name of his “friend” Donald Trump. “The future of our ties with the United States is an essential aspect of the European security architecture”the Hungarian Prime Minister politely asked. “We will talk about how to strengthen our strategic autonomy », he even added, taking up an idea dear to Emmanuel Macron.
“We need to examine whether we see the challenges before us in the same way and whether we look for answers in similar directions”However, it escaped Orban, who since the start of the war in Ukraine has shown his closeness to President Vladimir Putin. Behind your vision“strategic autonomy” He not only wants Europe to free itself from American interests, but also to move closer to those of China and Russia.
Be constructive
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