Hungary’s Orban backs Trump, warns of EU’s demise in anti-Western speech
- The EU’s longest-serving leader has become a right-wing icon for his opposition to immigration and LGBTQ rights
Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday that the European Union was sliding toward oblivion in a rambling anti-Western speech in which he warned of a new, Asia-oriented “world order” while throwing his support behind Donald Trump’s US presidential bid.
“Europe has given up defending its own interests,” Orban said in Baile Tusnad, a majority-ethnic Hungarian town in central Romania. “All Europe is doing today is following the US’ pro-Democrat foreign policy unconditionally … even at the cost of self-destruction.”
“A change is coming that has not been seen for 500 years. What we are facing is in fact a world order change,” he added, citing China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as becoming the “dominant centre” of the world.
Orban also alleged that the United States was behind the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines built to carry gas from Russia to Germany, calling it “an act of terrorism carried out at the obvious direction of the Americans”. He did not offer any evidence to back up the claim.
On Ukraine, Orban cast doubt on the war-torn country becoming either a member of Nato or the EU. “We Europeans do not have the money for it. Ukraine will revert to the position of a buffer state,” he said, adding that international security guarantees “will be enshrined in an agreement between the US and Russia”.
