RESTRAINED OR RECKLESS: WHAT’S THE HUNGARIAN PM GOING TO SAY IN BAILE TUSNAD?

Edit Inotai and Marian Chiriac (https://balkaninsight.com/2024/07/25/restrained-or-reckless-whats-the-hungarian-pm-going-to-say-in-baile-tusnad/)

Viktor Orban, relishing the EU presidency and buoyed by Trump’s position in the polls, is preparing to give another of his often-controversial speeches in the Romanian town on Saturday. Will he tone it down this year?

The stage is set in Baile Tusnad for the grand event – the Romanian town, 400 kilometres from the Hungarian border, where the populist Viktor Orban each year lays out his views on current global affairs and reveals his strategy to navigate the choppy waters of international politics.

It was here at the Tusvanyos Free Summer University and Student Camp, in front of Fidesz sympathisers from Hungary and supporters from the million-strong Hungarian minority in Transylvania, that Orban first promoted his ideas about the “illiberal state” and faced international opprobrium for discussing “mixed races”.

Few doubt that Orban intends to use the stage at the 33rd Tusvanyos Summer University and Student Camp, which this year carries the title “On the Right Track”, to again provoke his European allies. But experts wonder whether he is prepared to alienate himself further following his surprise and, from the EU’s point of view, unsanctioned visits to Moscow and Beijing in the first two weeks after Hungary assumed the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.

“The main topics will be peace, connectivity and competitiveness: the latter will be used as a link to the EU presidency’s program,” Zoltan Kiszelly, the director of political analysis at the Fidesz-close think tank Szazadveg, tells BIRN. “These are the issues where Orban can differ from the mainstream, where he can be visible.”

Hungary’s prime minister has a massive ego and is said to be bored with domestic politics. But he enjoys the international stage and the headlines – even if negative – from shaking hands with leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping or former US president Donald Trump. By advocating for his rather empty “peace narrative”, his strategy is to push everybody else into the warmongering camp.

“Orban wants to be part of big politics. He wants to stand out because he thinks it will benefit Hungary,” says Zsuzsanna Szelenyi, founding director of the CEU Democracy Institute Leadership Academy and author of Tainted Democracy: Viktor Orban and the Subversion of Hungary. “He has recognised that the most important, existential challenge to the future of the European Union is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and he wants to position himself in that debate.”

Szelenyi believes his speech on Saturday will mainly be an appeal to his supporters and the radical right in Europe. “I don’t think there will be any major innovations this year, he will rather repeat his messages, which are already popular among Trumpist Americans, about the death of liberalism, the importance of connectivity and traditional values. He will, of course, talk about his peace mission, but I don’t think he will go into details about a peace plan. This is, after all, the game of the great powers,” she says.

Political analysts in Romania concur with this perspective. “We don’t anticipate any surprises. His speech will align with his broader agenda to advance foreign policy strictly based on Hungary’s national interests,” Sorin Ionita, head of the Bucharest-based Expert Forum think tank, tells BIRN. “The only question is how forcefully Orban will present his ideas this time.”

‘Peaceniks’

For months now, Hungarian diplomacy has been concerned with a peace mission to arrange a ceasefire in Ukraine – without going into any details of what this might entail or at what price this peace would be achieved. Like a symbolic but rather erratic peace dove, Orban flew to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and finally Washington in one week in July. All this under the auspices of the Hungarian EU presidency, using the EU hashtag in his social media posts.

Understandably, this stoked anger in Brussels and EU capitals, with many politicians accusing Orban of hijacking the EU presidency and speaking on behalf of his European allies when he shakes hands with dictators. That first month of the EU presidency destroyed any lingering hopes that Hungary would act as an honest broker and use its presidency to break out of its European isolation, say experts. On the contrary, his globetrotting led to a partial boycott of its presidency events by the European Commission and seven of the 27 EU governments.

Orban was, of course, aware of the opportunities offered by the EU presidency, but not in the way that many analysts had expected. “He wants to show strength, that is what he believes in,” says Szelenyi. “He believes that the EU is weak and that it is liberalism that has weakened it. And he is convinced that Europe would be stronger if it had followed his advice. And in the end, he believes he will be proven right: Trump will win in the US, and Europeans will be tired of war.”

Expectations that Orban would show restraint and tone down his strong anti-EU narrative during Hungary’s presidency were wishful thinking from the start, argues Kiszelly. “It’s a zero-sum game for Orban. He cannot be expected to make a complete turnaround in his policies without losing his electoral support in Hungary. But he can only be released from quarantine if he makes a full turnaround. It is simply not worth it,” he says.

Paradoxically, Orban’s ideas are politically supported in Romania only by the right-wing populist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), which as a nationalist party also maintains a strong anti-Hungarian stance. On July 23, AUR leader George Simion stated that Romania should oppose “any military support to any other country”, directly referencing Ukraine. Simion also suggested that Romania should propose joining the Visegrad Group, alongside Hungary, Czechia, Poland and Slovakia.

Building bridges, burning bridges

Just having the Hungarian prime minister speak at Baile Tusnad is, in itself, controversial.

The brainchild of British BBC journalist David Campanale, the Tusvanyos Free Summer University and Student Camp was founded in 1990 with the idea of promoting Hungarian-Romanian understanding and strengthening bilateral relations. For most Hungarians, the loss under the 1920 Treaty of Trianon of historic Transylvania, a cradle of Hungarian culture and home to more than 1.6 million Hungarians, is still seen as a major international injustice. Other parts of Hungary went to Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine.

Minority rights were largely ignored by Romania’s Communist government, and it was only after the democratic transition in 1990 and the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who had actively encouraged the destruction of Hungarian villages in Transylvania, that hopes grew for a normalising of relations.

For years, the summer university served as a forum for building bridges between Romanian and Hungarian politicians and the leaders of Transylvania’s Hungarian ethnic minority. But interest in bilateral talks has gradually waned, eclipsed by Fidesz’s policy of building ethnic strongholds in neighbouring countries.

Over the past 15 years, the summer university has largely become an event for Fidesz politicians, party-aligned intellectuals, and leaders of the Hungarian ethnic community in Transylvania who receive generous financial support from Budapest. “The number of Romanian guests is actually very low,” the camp’s executive director, Krisztina Sandor, recently admitted in the Romanian media. “One reason could be that in an election year, Romanian politicians do not dare to come to Tusvanyos because it might not send a positive message to their supporters.”

On the plus side, the university has retained its party atmosphere, where politicians wear shorts and sneakers, and where concerts and a series of cultural programs keep young people preoccupied. “Fidesz is getting old, but the summer university brings in the younger generation. And it also offers participants a more informal atmosphere and a sense of belonging,” says Kiszelly.

What’s especially puzzling to many is the apparently relaxed attitude of the Romanian government to this annual Hungarian shindig on its soil. Only in a few exceptions has Bucharest signalled displeasure.

In 2013, then-president Traian Basescu warned that this could be the last time Romania allowed the summer university after Hungarian politicians criticised an administrative reform plan which they argued would be disadvantageous to the Hungarian minority. Nothing happened, and the following year Orban gave his now-infamous speech about the illiberal state – a term coined by Fareed Zakaria in 1997 to describe authoritarian tendencies in seemingly democratic countries. Orban happily endorsed the idea and admitted he is building such a regime in Hungary. Most Western leaders, including the then-German chancellor Angela Merkel were puzzled and underlined that democracy and liberalism belong together.

In 2022, after three years of absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Orban declared that Hungary is not a “country of mixed races”. Romania’s government protested along with many other nations, and this was one of the few statements that Orban later had to row back on.

The past year has also seen a number of bumps in the road. Last July, Orban met Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu in Bucharest, calling the meeting “the beginning of a beautiful friendship”. Yet two days later, in Baile Tusnad, the Hungarian prime minister publicly complained that Romanian diplomats had tried to exert pressure on him by requesting that he not talk about “non-existent administrative regions” (referring to Transylvania and Szeklerland). “Well, we have never said that these are Romanian administrative regions,” Orban retorted, fuelling indignation in Bucharest.

On Friday, Orban is set to meet Ciolacu again. Their dialogue will likely cover general topics, reaffirming that relations between the two countries are sound, particularly at the economic level.

But, in general, Orban tends not to criticise his Romanian hosts directly, and his speeches lack any anti-Romanian messages. Experts agree that banning or restricting the summer camp would backfire and cause even more damage.

“Bilateral relations between the two countries are actually quite good,” Kiszelly says. Hungary supports Romania’s full Schengen membership and indicated its interest in buying gas from the country, “and President Iohannis, who is eyeing a seat in the next European Commission, could use Hungary’s support.”

“Orban is not fighting Romania in his speeches; he is fighting a civilisational war,” concludes Szelenyi.