Hungary's Orban vows surge to right in US and Europe

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has told a crowd of cheering supporters that his government's nationalist conservative policies will win this year in Europe and beyond.

"We started this year alone, by the end of it we will be the majority in the world!" he said in Budapest.

He was confident Donald Trump would win November's US presidential election and right-wing parties would win European parliament elections in June.

He then launched an attack on the EU.

"If we want to preserve Hungary's freedom and sovereignty, we have no choice: We have to occupy Brussels," he said during a speech to mark Hungary's national day.

Mr Orban has long been at loggerheads with the EU, but he told supporters that they were ahead of a "sovereignty turn" in the US as well.

His comments are the latest salvo in a war of words with Joe Biden's administration in Washington over Hungary's position on the war in Ukraine, and international criticism of his concentration of power at home.

Last week in Florida, after meeting Donald Trump, the Hungarian leader predicted Russia's war in Ukraine would end because the new US President would not "give a penny" to Kyiv.

President Biden quickly retorted that Mr Orban "doesn't think democracy works and is looking for dictatorship".

US ambassador to Budapest David Pressman also hit out at the Hungarian prime minister this week.

"Prime Minister Orban, who on the one hand baselessly claims the United States government is trying to overthrow his government, publicly calls for the political defeat of the President of the United States and actively participates in US partisan political events," the US envoy said on Thursday.

In his speech on Friday, Mr Orban reserved his most caustic remarks for the European Union and afterwards, as his supporters headed home, some harangued a lone protester, a young man with a blue European Union flag.

"We should defend Hungarian sovereignty from Donald Trump and from the Russians, not the European Union," Peter Csurgo told the BBC.

Centre stage in the US-Hungary row is the Hungarian government's demand for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, its opposition to military aid for Kyiv, and Hungary's regular meetings with top Russian officials, including Viktor Orban's encounter with President Vladimir Putin last October in Beijing.

The Hungarian approach to the war in Ukraine "does not stand up to reality", the US ambassador said in Budapest on 14 March.

"The Hungarian policy is based on a fantasy that disarming Ukraine will stop Putin. History shows it would do the reverse. It is not a proposal for peace; it is capitulation."

Mr Orban's conservative nationalist Fidesz party has been in office since 2010 and the Biden administration is also at loggerheads with the government over its understanding of democracy.

The ambassador highlighted "the systematic takeover of independent media, where oligarchs purchased media outlets only to gift them to a government-controlled foundation, while the few outlets that remain independent face investigations, tax audits, and the loss of advertising revenue".

Mr Orban and his government now face a new challenge from an unexpected angle, following a paedophile scandal last month.

Peter Magyar, a former Fidesz insider and 43-year-old businessman, launched a new political party at a rally of his own on Friday that attracted tens of thousands of people in Budapest.

In contrast with the prime minister, he called for a constructive dialogue with the European Union and told supporters that he was setting up the "Stand Up, Hungarians" movement for all those fed up with the mistakes of the past three decades since the fall of communism.

"Every avalanche starts with a snowflake," he wrote earlier on Facebook, promising to challenge the "corruption and nepotism" that he said stained Viktor Orban's rule.

The new party will attempt to claim the vacuum in Hungary's political centre, left empty by the lurch to the right of Fidesz and by the failures of the current opposition.

Peter Magyar's movement aims to emerge as a serious force to challenge Fidesz at the next parliamentary elections in 2026.