You have likely heard of the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán (Part two)
MIÉP challenged the government's legitimacy, demanded a recount, complained of election fraud, and generally kept the country in election mode until the October municipal elections. The socialist-controlled Central Elections Committee ruled that a recount was unnecessary, a position supported by observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, whose only substantive criticism of the election conduct was that the state television carried a consistent bias in favour of Fidesz.
Orbán received the Freedom Award of the American Enterprise Institute and the New Atlantic Initiative (2001), the Polak Award (2001), the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit (2001), the "Förderpreis Soziale Marktwirtschaft" (Price for the Social Market Economy, 2002) and the Mérite Européen prize (2004). In April 2004, he received the Papal Grand Cross of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.
In the 2004 European Parliament election, the ruling Hungarian Socialist Party was heavily defeated by the opposition conservative Fidesz. Fidesz gained 47.4% of the vote and 12 of Hungary's 24 seats.
Orbán was the Fidesz candidate for the parliamentary election in 2006. Fidesz and its new-old candidate failed again to gain a majority in this election, which initially put Orbán's future political career as the leader of Fidesz in question. However, after fighting with the Socialist-Liberal coalition, Orbán's position resolidified, and he was elected president of Fidesz for yet another term in May 2007.
On 17 September 2006, an audio recording surfaced from a closed-door Hungarian Socialist Party meeting, which was held on 26 May 2006, in which Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány gave an obscenity-laden speech. The leak ignited mass protests. On 1 November, Orbán and his party announced their plans to stage several large-scale demonstrations across Hungary on the anniversary of the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Revolution. The events were intended to serve as a memorial to the victims of the Soviet invasion and a protest against police brutality during the 23 October unrest in Budapest. Planned events included a candlelight vigil march across Budapest. However, the demonstrations were small and petered out by the end of the year. A new round of demonstrations expected in the spring of 2007 did not materialize. On 1 October 2006, Fidesz won the municipal elections, which counterbalanced the MSZP-led government's power to some extent. Fidesz won 15 of 23 mayoralties in Hungary's largest cities—although it narrowly lost Budapest to the Liberal Party—and majorities in 18 of 20 regional assemblies.
On 9 March 2008, a national referendum took place on revoking government reforms which introduced doctor fees per visit and medical fees paid per number of days spent in hospital as well as tuition fees in higher education. Fidesz initiated the referendum against the ruling MSZP. The procedure for the referendum started on 23 October 2006, when Orbán announced they would hand in seven questions to the National Electorate Office, three of which (on abolishing copayments, daily fees and college tuition fees) were officially approved on 17 December 2007 and called on 24 January 2008. The referendum passed, a significant victory for Fidesz.
In the 2009 European Parliament election, Fidesz won by a large margin, garnering 56.36% of votes and 14 of Hungary's 22 seats. "Hungarians won't live according to the commands of foreign powers", Orbán told the crowd at Kossuth square on 15 March 2012.
In the 2010 parliamentary elections, Orbán's party won 52.7% of the popular vote but received a 68% majority of parliamentary seats due to the design of the post-communist electoral system. A two-third parliamentary majority is enough to change the constitution and in 2011 Orbán's government drafted a new constitution behind closed doors, debated it for only nine days in the parliament and passed it on a party line. Orbán would go on to amend the constitution twelve times in his first year in office. Among other changes, it includes support for traditional values, nationalism, references to Christianity, and a controversial electoral reform, which decreased the number of seats in the Parliament of Hungary from 386 to 199. The new constitution entered into force on 1 January 2012 and was later amended further.
In 2012 Orbán's government implemented a flat tax on personal income set at 16%. Orbán has called his government "pragmatic", citing restrictions on early retirement in the police force and military, making welfare more transparent, and a central banking law that "gives Hungary more independence from the European Central Bank".
On 14 January 2014 Orban went to Moscow in order to sign with Putin an agreement on the Paks II nuclear power plant (NPP). The Russian state-owned enterprise Rosatom would develop the NPP, and Hungary was to finance the plant by borrowing from Russia. At the same time Orban reassured everyone that the South Stream pipeline would be completed soon. The BBC complained that "there was no formal bidding process for the plant's expansion, and the terms of the loan agreement have not yet been made public," even after the Hungarian parliament approved the deal on 6 February. It later came to light that the loan amounted to €8bn and was financed over a 30 year term. Hungarian MFA Peter Szijjarto told reporters that the deal was "the business (transaction) of the century." Westinghouse and Areva, two Western prime contractors, had been lured since 2012 by the Hungarian civil service but eventually had been frozen out of competition by the Orban government, who chose to sole-source the deal.
After the April 2014 parliamentary election, Fidesz won a majority, garnering 133 of the 199 seats in the National Assembly. While he won a large majority, he garnered 44.5% of the national vote, down from 52.7% in 2010.
Orbán held a now famous speech in July 2014 in Băile Tușnad, a remote village in Romania, at the Bálványos Free Summer University and Student Camp. In his speech he articulated his vision of forging an illiberal democracy in Hungary and described the Western 2007–2008 financial crisis as a paradigm shift of the international order, comparable with the two world wars and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Orbán described his current mission: "while breaking with the [liberal] dogmas and ideologies that have been adopted by the West and keeping ourselves independent from them, we are trying to find the form of community organisation, the new Hungarian state, which is capable of making our community competitive in the great global race for decades to come." In November 2014 Orbán garnered controversy for proposing an "internet tax", and for his perceived corruption. His second premiership saw numerous protests against his government, including one in Budapest in November 2014 against the proposed "internet tax".
During the 2015 European migrant crisis, Orbán ordered the erection of the Hungary–Serbia barrier to block entry of illegal immigrants so that Hungary could register all the migrants arriving from Serbia, which is the country's responsibility under the Dublin Regulation, a European Union law. Under Orbán, Hungary took numerous actions to combat illegal immigration and reduce refugee levels. In May 2020, the European Court of Justice ruled against Hungary's policy of migrant transit zones, which Orbán subsequently abolished while also tightening the country's asylum rules.
As other Visegrád Group leaders, Orbán opposes any compulsory EU long-term quota on redistribution of migrants. According to him, Turkey should be considered a safe third country for unwanted immigrants or refugees.
In 2015 Orban wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "Europe's response is madness. We must acknowledge that the European Union's misguided immigration policy is responsible for this situation." He also demanded an official EU list of "safe countries" to which migrants can be returned.
He proposed 6 points to the European Union to tackle the crisis:
Joint surveillance of Greek borders to prevent migration from continuing illegally
The separation of refugees and economic immigrants prior to their entrance to the Schengen area
All EU Member States and countries it judges to be as such should be considered Safe States (a state which complies with the 1951 Refugee Convention) to be able to accept refugees on paper.
Every member should increase their contributions by at least 1% and reduce their expenditure by 1%. This would raise €3 billion for crisis management and refugee aid.
Work with Ankara and Moscow to manage the wave [coming from Syria] (This was also approved by D.C.)
The creation of a world quota (not obliging but) calling on all developed countries to accept refugees on a proportional basis.
All but one of these points were voted through by the Parliament in the September of 2015 (the surveillance of the archipelago was left to the Greek military)
In the April 2018 Hungarian parliamentary election, the Fidesz–KDNP alliance was victorious and preserved its two-thirds majority, with Orbán remaining prime minister. Orbán and Fidesz campaigned primarily on the issues of immigration and foreign meddling, and the election outcome was seen as a victory for right-wing populism in Europe.
In his 2018 speech at the meeting of the Association of Cities with County Rights, Orbán said "We must state that we do not want to be diverse and do not want to be mixed: we do not want our own colour, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others. We do not want this. We do not want that at all. We do not want to be a diverse country."
On 30 March 2020, the Hungarian parliament voted 137 to 53 in favor of passing legislation that would create a state of emergency without a time limit, grant the prime minister the ability to rule by decree, suspend by-elections, and introduce the possibility of prison sentences for spreading fake news and sanctions for leaving quarantine. Two and a half months later, on 16 June 2020, the Hungarian parliament passed a bill that ended the state of emergency effective 19 June. However, on the same day the parliament passed a new law removing the requirement of parliamentary approval for future "medical" states of emergencies, allowing the government to declare them by decree.
In 2021, the parliament transferred control of 11 state universities to foundations led by allies of Orbán. The Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a residential college, received an influx of government funds and assets equal to about 1% of Hungary's gross domestic product, reportedly as part of a mission to train future conservative intellectuals.
Due to a combination of unfavourable conditions, which involved soaring demand of natural gas, its diminished supply from Russia and Norway to the European markets, and less power generation by renewable energy sources such as wind, water and solar energy, Europe faced steep increases in energy prices in 2021. In October 2021, Orbán blamed a record-breaking surge in energy prices on the European Commission's Green Deal plans.
Despite the anti-immigration rhetoric from Orbán, Hungary increased the immigration of foreign workers into the country as of 2019 to address a labour shortage. In February 2020, Orbán was interviewed by Christopher DeMuth at the National Conservatism Conference in Rome. In July 2020, Orbán expressed that he still expects arguments over linking of disbursement of funds of the European Union to rule-of-law criteria but remarked in a state radio interview that they "didn't win the war, we (they) won an important battle". In August 2020, Orbán whilst speaking at an event to inaugurate a monument commemorating the Treaty of Trianon, said Central European nations should come together to preserve their Christian roots as western Europe experiments with same-sex families, immigration and atheism.
In a 2021 speech, Orbán said "The challenge with Bosnia is how to integrate a country with 2 million Muslims." Bosnian leaders responded by calling for Orbán's visit to Sarajevo to be cancelled. The head of the country's Islamic Community, Husein Kavazović, characterized his statement as "xenophobic and racist".
In the April 2022 parliamentary election, Fidesz won a majority, garnering 135 of the 199 seats in the National Assembly. While Orbán's close ties with Moscow raised concerns, core Fidesz voters were persuaded that mending ties with the EU might also lead Hungary into war. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe dispatched a full-scale monitoring mission for the election. Orbán declared victory on Sunday night, with partial results showing his Fidesz party leading the vote by a wide margin. Addressing his supporters after the partial results, Orbán said: "We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels." Opposition leader Péter Márki-Zay admitted defeat shortly after Orbán's speech. In May 2022, Orbán promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory in a speech.
In July 2022, Orbán – repeating the thesis of Jean Raspail – spoke in Romania against the "mixing" of European and non-European races, adding "We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race and we do not want to become a mixed race." In Vienna two days later, he clarified that he was talking about cultures and not about race.
Orbán attended the inauguration ceremonies of re-elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara in 2018 and 2023. In October 2018, Orbán said after talks with President Erdoğan in Budapest that "A stable Turkish government and a stable Turkey are a precondition for Hungary not to be endangered in any way due to overland migration."
In June 2019, Orbán met Myanmar's State Counsellor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. They discussed bilateral ties and illegal migration.
Orbán has maintained close ties with China throughout his tenure, and his administration is generally seen as China's closest ally in the EU. Hungary joined China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2015, while in April 2019, Orbán attended a BRI forum in Beijing, where he met the Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He spearheaded plans to open a Fudan University campus in Budapest, which led to pushback in Hungary. He met with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo member and top diplomat Wang Yi in Budapest on 20 February 2023; he afterwards backed the peace plan released by Wang Yi concerning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Orbán questioned Nord Stream II, a new Russia–Germany natural gas pipeline. He said he wants to hear a "reasonable argument why South Stream was bad and Nord Stream is not". "South Stream" refers to the Balkan pipeline cancelled by Russia in December 2014 after obstacles from the EU.
Since 2017, Hungary's relations with Ukraine rapidly deteriorated over the issue of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine. Orbán and his cabinet ministers repeatedly criticized Ukraine's 2017 education law, which makes Ukrainian the only language of education in state schools, and threatened to block further Ukraine's EU and NATO integration until it is modified or repealed. (The language law was amended in December 2023 in favour of official languages of the European Union, including Hungarian.)
Orbán has displayed an ambivalent attitude towards Russia and Vladimir Putin, especially following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He has described the war as "clear aggression" by Russia, saying a sovereign Ukraine is needed "to stop Russia posing a threat to the security of Europe". However, conversely, he has also criticised the European Union for "prolonging the war" in Ukraine by sanctioning Russia and sending weapons and money to Ukraine instead of encouraging a negotiated peace, and has been accused of blocking aid to Ukraine.
Amidst the 2021-2022 Ukraine crisis, Orbán was the first EU leader to meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow in a visit he called "a peacekeeping mission". They also discussed Russian gas exports to Hungary. On 2 March, as Russia had already launched an invasion of Ukraine, Orbán decided to welcome Ukrainian refugees to Hungary, and will support the Ukrainian membership to the European Union. Initially, Orbán condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and said Hungary would not veto EU sanctions against Russia. However, Orbán rejected sanctions on Russian energy, due to Hungary's excessive dependency (85%) on Russian fossil fuels.[186] In late March 2022, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky singled out Orban for his lack of support for Ukraine. In June, Zelensky thanked Orbán for supporting Ukraine's sovereignty and for giving asylum to Ukrainians.
On 27 February 2023, Viktor Orbán said that Hungary supports the Chinese peace plan in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, despite opposition by Western leaders. Beijing's 12-point statement that criticised unilateral sanctions, would reduce strategic risks associated with nuclear weapons in Central and Eastern Europe, according to the statement.
Viktor Orbán during the 7th Summit of Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States in Baku, in 2019
Since 2014, Hungary has had observer status at the General Assembly of Turkic-speaking States, and in 2017 it submitted an application for accession to the International Turkic Academy. During the 6th Summit of Turkic Council, Orbán said that Hungary is seeking even closer cooperation with the Turkic Council. In 2018, Hungary obtained observer status in the council. In 2021, Orbán mentioned that the Hungarian and Turkic peoples share a historical and cultural heritage "reaching back many long centuries". He also pointed out that the Hungarian people are "proud of this heritage", and "were also proud when their opponents in Europe mocked them as barbarian Huns and Attila's people". In 2023, during his visit to Kazakhstan, Orbán said that Hungarians come to Kazakhstan "with great pleasure" because the two nations are connected by "millennial common roots".
The Hungarian government expressed support for Israel in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. On 13 October, Orbán stated "Israel has the right to defend itself" and "we will not allow sympathy rallies supporting terrorist organisations". On 22 October, Fidesz parliamentary leader Máté Kocsis announced that the party will introduce a manifesto before the parliament condemning Hamas terrorism.
Orbán received the Freedom Award of the American Enterprise Institute and the New Atlantic Initiative (2001), the Polak Award (2001), the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit (2001), the "Förderpreis Soziale Marktwirtschaft" (Price for the Social Market Economy, 2002) and the Mérite Européen prize (2004). In April 2004, he received the Papal Grand Cross of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.
In the 2004 European Parliament election, the ruling Hungarian Socialist Party was heavily defeated by the opposition conservative Fidesz. Fidesz gained 47.4% of the vote and 12 of Hungary's 24 seats.
Orbán was the Fidesz candidate for the parliamentary election in 2006. Fidesz and its new-old candidate failed again to gain a majority in this election, which initially put Orbán's future political career as the leader of Fidesz in question. However, after fighting with the Socialist-Liberal coalition, Orbán's position resolidified, and he was elected president of Fidesz for yet another term in May 2007.
On 17 September 2006, an audio recording surfaced from a closed-door Hungarian Socialist Party meeting, which was held on 26 May 2006, in which Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány gave an obscenity-laden speech. The leak ignited mass protests. On 1 November, Orbán and his party announced their plans to stage several large-scale demonstrations across Hungary on the anniversary of the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Revolution. The events were intended to serve as a memorial to the victims of the Soviet invasion and a protest against police brutality during the 23 October unrest in Budapest. Planned events included a candlelight vigil march across Budapest. However, the demonstrations were small and petered out by the end of the year. A new round of demonstrations expected in the spring of 2007 did not materialize. On 1 October 2006, Fidesz won the municipal elections, which counterbalanced the MSZP-led government's power to some extent. Fidesz won 15 of 23 mayoralties in Hungary's largest cities—although it narrowly lost Budapest to the Liberal Party—and majorities in 18 of 20 regional assemblies.
On 9 March 2008, a national referendum took place on revoking government reforms which introduced doctor fees per visit and medical fees paid per number of days spent in hospital as well as tuition fees in higher education. Fidesz initiated the referendum against the ruling MSZP. The procedure for the referendum started on 23 October 2006, when Orbán announced they would hand in seven questions to the National Electorate Office, three of which (on abolishing copayments, daily fees and college tuition fees) were officially approved on 17 December 2007 and called on 24 January 2008. The referendum passed, a significant victory for Fidesz.
In the 2009 European Parliament election, Fidesz won by a large margin, garnering 56.36% of votes and 14 of Hungary's 22 seats. "Hungarians won't live according to the commands of foreign powers", Orbán told the crowd at Kossuth square on 15 March 2012.
In the 2010 parliamentary elections, Orbán's party won 52.7% of the popular vote but received a 68% majority of parliamentary seats due to the design of the post-communist electoral system. A two-third parliamentary majority is enough to change the constitution and in 2011 Orbán's government drafted a new constitution behind closed doors, debated it for only nine days in the parliament and passed it on a party line. Orbán would go on to amend the constitution twelve times in his first year in office. Among other changes, it includes support for traditional values, nationalism, references to Christianity, and a controversial electoral reform, which decreased the number of seats in the Parliament of Hungary from 386 to 199. The new constitution entered into force on 1 January 2012 and was later amended further.
In 2012 Orbán's government implemented a flat tax on personal income set at 16%. Orbán has called his government "pragmatic", citing restrictions on early retirement in the police force and military, making welfare more transparent, and a central banking law that "gives Hungary more independence from the European Central Bank".
On 14 January 2014 Orban went to Moscow in order to sign with Putin an agreement on the Paks II nuclear power plant (NPP). The Russian state-owned enterprise Rosatom would develop the NPP, and Hungary was to finance the plant by borrowing from Russia. At the same time Orban reassured everyone that the South Stream pipeline would be completed soon. The BBC complained that "there was no formal bidding process for the plant's expansion, and the terms of the loan agreement have not yet been made public," even after the Hungarian parliament approved the deal on 6 February. It later came to light that the loan amounted to €8bn and was financed over a 30 year term. Hungarian MFA Peter Szijjarto told reporters that the deal was "the business (transaction) of the century." Westinghouse and Areva, two Western prime contractors, had been lured since 2012 by the Hungarian civil service but eventually had been frozen out of competition by the Orban government, who chose to sole-source the deal.
After the April 2014 parliamentary election, Fidesz won a majority, garnering 133 of the 199 seats in the National Assembly. While he won a large majority, he garnered 44.5% of the national vote, down from 52.7% in 2010.
Orbán held a now famous speech in July 2014 in Băile Tușnad, a remote village in Romania, at the Bálványos Free Summer University and Student Camp. In his speech he articulated his vision of forging an illiberal democracy in Hungary and described the Western 2007–2008 financial crisis as a paradigm shift of the international order, comparable with the two world wars and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Orbán described his current mission: "while breaking with the [liberal] dogmas and ideologies that have been adopted by the West and keeping ourselves independent from them, we are trying to find the form of community organisation, the new Hungarian state, which is capable of making our community competitive in the great global race for decades to come." In November 2014 Orbán garnered controversy for proposing an "internet tax", and for his perceived corruption. His second premiership saw numerous protests against his government, including one in Budapest in November 2014 against the proposed "internet tax".
During the 2015 European migrant crisis, Orbán ordered the erection of the Hungary–Serbia barrier to block entry of illegal immigrants so that Hungary could register all the migrants arriving from Serbia, which is the country's responsibility under the Dublin Regulation, a European Union law. Under Orbán, Hungary took numerous actions to combat illegal immigration and reduce refugee levels. In May 2020, the European Court of Justice ruled against Hungary's policy of migrant transit zones, which Orbán subsequently abolished while also tightening the country's asylum rules.
As other Visegrád Group leaders, Orbán opposes any compulsory EU long-term quota on redistribution of migrants. According to him, Turkey should be considered a safe third country for unwanted immigrants or refugees.
In 2015 Orban wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "Europe's response is madness. We must acknowledge that the European Union's misguided immigration policy is responsible for this situation." He also demanded an official EU list of "safe countries" to which migrants can be returned.
He proposed 6 points to the European Union to tackle the crisis:
Joint surveillance of Greek borders to prevent migration from continuing illegally
The separation of refugees and economic immigrants prior to their entrance to the Schengen area
All EU Member States and countries it judges to be as such should be considered Safe States (a state which complies with the 1951 Refugee Convention) to be able to accept refugees on paper.
Every member should increase their contributions by at least 1% and reduce their expenditure by 1%. This would raise €3 billion for crisis management and refugee aid.
Work with Ankara and Moscow to manage the wave [coming from Syria] (This was also approved by D.C.)
The creation of a world quota (not obliging but) calling on all developed countries to accept refugees on a proportional basis.
All but one of these points were voted through by the Parliament in the September of 2015 (the surveillance of the archipelago was left to the Greek military)
In the April 2018 Hungarian parliamentary election, the Fidesz–KDNP alliance was victorious and preserved its two-thirds majority, with Orbán remaining prime minister. Orbán and Fidesz campaigned primarily on the issues of immigration and foreign meddling, and the election outcome was seen as a victory for right-wing populism in Europe.
In his 2018 speech at the meeting of the Association of Cities with County Rights, Orbán said "We must state that we do not want to be diverse and do not want to be mixed: we do not want our own colour, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others. We do not want this. We do not want that at all. We do not want to be a diverse country."
On 30 March 2020, the Hungarian parliament voted 137 to 53 in favor of passing legislation that would create a state of emergency without a time limit, grant the prime minister the ability to rule by decree, suspend by-elections, and introduce the possibility of prison sentences for spreading fake news and sanctions for leaving quarantine. Two and a half months later, on 16 June 2020, the Hungarian parliament passed a bill that ended the state of emergency effective 19 June. However, on the same day the parliament passed a new law removing the requirement of parliamentary approval for future "medical" states of emergencies, allowing the government to declare them by decree.
In 2021, the parliament transferred control of 11 state universities to foundations led by allies of Orbán. The Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a residential college, received an influx of government funds and assets equal to about 1% of Hungary's gross domestic product, reportedly as part of a mission to train future conservative intellectuals.
Due to a combination of unfavourable conditions, which involved soaring demand of natural gas, its diminished supply from Russia and Norway to the European markets, and less power generation by renewable energy sources such as wind, water and solar energy, Europe faced steep increases in energy prices in 2021. In October 2021, Orbán blamed a record-breaking surge in energy prices on the European Commission's Green Deal plans.
Despite the anti-immigration rhetoric from Orbán, Hungary increased the immigration of foreign workers into the country as of 2019 to address a labour shortage. In February 2020, Orbán was interviewed by Christopher DeMuth at the National Conservatism Conference in Rome. In July 2020, Orbán expressed that he still expects arguments over linking of disbursement of funds of the European Union to rule-of-law criteria but remarked in a state radio interview that they "didn't win the war, we (they) won an important battle". In August 2020, Orbán whilst speaking at an event to inaugurate a monument commemorating the Treaty of Trianon, said Central European nations should come together to preserve their Christian roots as western Europe experiments with same-sex families, immigration and atheism.
In a 2021 speech, Orbán said "The challenge with Bosnia is how to integrate a country with 2 million Muslims." Bosnian leaders responded by calling for Orbán's visit to Sarajevo to be cancelled. The head of the country's Islamic Community, Husein Kavazović, characterized his statement as "xenophobic and racist".
In the April 2022 parliamentary election, Fidesz won a majority, garnering 135 of the 199 seats in the National Assembly. While Orbán's close ties with Moscow raised concerns, core Fidesz voters were persuaded that mending ties with the EU might also lead Hungary into war. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe dispatched a full-scale monitoring mission for the election. Orbán declared victory on Sunday night, with partial results showing his Fidesz party leading the vote by a wide margin. Addressing his supporters after the partial results, Orbán said: "We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels." Opposition leader Péter Márki-Zay admitted defeat shortly after Orbán's speech. In May 2022, Orbán promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory in a speech.
In July 2022, Orbán – repeating the thesis of Jean Raspail – spoke in Romania against the "mixing" of European and non-European races, adding "We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race and we do not want to become a mixed race." In Vienna two days later, he clarified that he was talking about cultures and not about race.
Orbán attended the inauguration ceremonies of re-elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara in 2018 and 2023. In October 2018, Orbán said after talks with President Erdoğan in Budapest that "A stable Turkish government and a stable Turkey are a precondition for Hungary not to be endangered in any way due to overland migration."
In June 2019, Orbán met Myanmar's State Counsellor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. They discussed bilateral ties and illegal migration.
Orbán has maintained close ties with China throughout his tenure, and his administration is generally seen as China's closest ally in the EU. Hungary joined China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2015, while in April 2019, Orbán attended a BRI forum in Beijing, where he met the Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He spearheaded plans to open a Fudan University campus in Budapest, which led to pushback in Hungary. He met with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo member and top diplomat Wang Yi in Budapest on 20 February 2023; he afterwards backed the peace plan released by Wang Yi concerning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Orbán questioned Nord Stream II, a new Russia–Germany natural gas pipeline. He said he wants to hear a "reasonable argument why South Stream was bad and Nord Stream is not". "South Stream" refers to the Balkan pipeline cancelled by Russia in December 2014 after obstacles from the EU.
Since 2017, Hungary's relations with Ukraine rapidly deteriorated over the issue of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine. Orbán and his cabinet ministers repeatedly criticized Ukraine's 2017 education law, which makes Ukrainian the only language of education in state schools, and threatened to block further Ukraine's EU and NATO integration until it is modified or repealed. (The language law was amended in December 2023 in favour of official languages of the European Union, including Hungarian.)
Orbán has displayed an ambivalent attitude towards Russia and Vladimir Putin, especially following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He has described the war as "clear aggression" by Russia, saying a sovereign Ukraine is needed "to stop Russia posing a threat to the security of Europe". However, conversely, he has also criticised the European Union for "prolonging the war" in Ukraine by sanctioning Russia and sending weapons and money to Ukraine instead of encouraging a negotiated peace, and has been accused of blocking aid to Ukraine.
Amidst the 2021-2022 Ukraine crisis, Orbán was the first EU leader to meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow in a visit he called "a peacekeeping mission". They also discussed Russian gas exports to Hungary. On 2 March, as Russia had already launched an invasion of Ukraine, Orbán decided to welcome Ukrainian refugees to Hungary, and will support the Ukrainian membership to the European Union. Initially, Orbán condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and said Hungary would not veto EU sanctions against Russia. However, Orbán rejected sanctions on Russian energy, due to Hungary's excessive dependency (85%) on Russian fossil fuels.[186] In late March 2022, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky singled out Orban for his lack of support for Ukraine. In June, Zelensky thanked Orbán for supporting Ukraine's sovereignty and for giving asylum to Ukrainians.
On 27 February 2023, Viktor Orbán said that Hungary supports the Chinese peace plan in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, despite opposition by Western leaders. Beijing's 12-point statement that criticised unilateral sanctions, would reduce strategic risks associated with nuclear weapons in Central and Eastern Europe, according to the statement.
Viktor Orbán during the 7th Summit of Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States in Baku, in 2019
Since 2014, Hungary has had observer status at the General Assembly of Turkic-speaking States, and in 2017 it submitted an application for accession to the International Turkic Academy. During the 6th Summit of Turkic Council, Orbán said that Hungary is seeking even closer cooperation with the Turkic Council. In 2018, Hungary obtained observer status in the council. In 2021, Orbán mentioned that the Hungarian and Turkic peoples share a historical and cultural heritage "reaching back many long centuries". He also pointed out that the Hungarian people are "proud of this heritage", and "were also proud when their opponents in Europe mocked them as barbarian Huns and Attila's people". In 2023, during his visit to Kazakhstan, Orbán said that Hungarians come to Kazakhstan "with great pleasure" because the two nations are connected by "millennial common roots".
The Hungarian government expressed support for Israel in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. On 13 October, Orbán stated "Israel has the right to defend itself" and "we will not allow sympathy rallies supporting terrorist organisations". On 22 October, Fidesz parliamentary leader Máté Kocsis announced that the party will introduce a manifesto before the parliament condemning Hamas terrorism.
