Written by: Sylvie Kauffmann
In her book Freedom, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recalls how emotional she was when she sat down in her seat in Rio de Janeiro in 2014 to watch the World Cup final between Germany and Argentina. Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, happened to be sitting across from her. A big football fan, he teased her: “One thing is clear. Here you can’t be sure you’re going to win.”
Germany won 1-0. But for Merkel, defeating Orbán on his home turf in Europe would prove more difficult. That same year, Orbán coined the phrase “illiberal democracy,” which would define his fight against the established political order of the European Union.
Viktor Orbán is facing his most serious electoral challenge yet on April 12 — so serious that Donald Trump is sending his vice president, JD Vance, to his rescue. In Brussels, Berlin and Paris, some may find it useful to look back and reflect on Orbán’s tumultuous 16 years in power, wondering how so much damage was allowed to be done to European cohesion.
Until the last moment, the Hungarian leader defied the European Union, vetoing a vital €90 billion loan for Ukraine. His foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, admitted that he had coordinated with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on sanctions targeting Moscow.
The construction of an “illiberal democracy” in the heart of Europe began by taking advantage of the generous EU budget, while constantly attacking what were seen as European Union interference in Hungary’s sovereignty. EU cohesion funds financed more than half of the country’s public investment, averaging over 3% of Hungary’s GDP for more than a decade. Meanwhile, Orbán’s associates have benefited from large-scale public contracts.
Germany quickly became Hungary's dominant partner. Viktor Orbán wanted to industrialize the country's economy; Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Opel were ready to do so, attracted by cheap labor and state subsidies.
Visiting Budapest in 2015, Angela Merkel tried to lecture Orbán on the role of the democratic opposition; he responded by boasting about the 300,000 jobs created by German companies and record exports to her country: “All I can say to the Chancellor is: thank you, Germany!”
Just as her antipathy towards Vladimir Putin did not prevent Merkel from increasing Germany's dependence on Russian gas in the interests of German industry, she could not ignore the benefits that Hungary brought to her country's economy.
The two leaders soon found themselves at odds with each other. Later, in 2015, when hundreds of thousands of Syrian and Afghan refugees tried to cross through Hungary to reach Germany, Viktor Orbán built a fence on the border, while Angela Merkel welcomed them with open arms. This episode became a turning point in the rise of populist movements in Europe.
An official who attended a European summit in September 2015 recounted how leaders from Central Europe and Donald Tusk, then president of the European Council, pleaded in vain with both Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker, then president of the European Commission, not to impose refugee quotas on member states.
Western European leaders completely misread the shock that the refugee crisis caused in post-communist societies unprepared for multiethnic immigration. Their uncompromising stance contributed to the victory of the Polish nationalist-populist Law and Justice party and strengthened Orbán's position as the leader of the illiberal camp.
He had another advantage, which he used skillfully: the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament. It included his own party, Fidesz, as well as Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. The EPP, hypocritically, offered Viktor Orbán crucial protection until 2019, when it finally suspended Fidesz — but did not expel it, as it still needed the votes of Hungarian MEPs to elect Ursula von der Leyen as Commission president with a very narrow majority. Fidesz eventually left the group in 2021, but for two decades it benefited from this tolerance.
French President Emmanuel Macron believed he could coax Orbán to a more reasonable stance. Both passionate about history, they would hold long intellectual one-on-one conversations around the dinner table at the Élysée Palace. But that didn’t change the Hungarian “rebel”’s stance this time either.
Ultimately, the European Union’s main mistake, according to Clément Beaune, Macron’s former European affairs adviser, was the belief that member states, especially those in Central Europe, would inevitably follow the path of liberal democracy. “We didn’t foresee what happened, so we didn’t have the right tools,” he says. One solution could be to abandon the unanimity rule in foreign policy decision-making. But, Beaune adds, “France and Germany always opposed this idea because they thought it protected them. In fact, it protected Orbán.”
The author of this column, Sylvie Kauffmann, is a columnist for the French newspaper "Le Monde"
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