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Marco Rubio comes to Budapest this week
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to visit Bratislava and Budapest on 15-16 February, the State Department said in a statement on Monday.
Marco Rubio will be in Budapest this week
Rubio will visit central Europe after attending the Munich Security Conference from 13 to 15 February, the statement said.
According to the statement, Rubio’s talks in Budapest will aim to “bolster our shared bilateral and regional interests, including our commitment to peace processes to resolve global conflicts and to the US-Hungary energy partnership.”
In Bratislava, Rubio will discuss nuclear energy cooperation, regional security, modernisation of the Slovak army, and Slovakia’s NATO commitments, the statement said.
Big European political divide between elite and ordinary citizens, Balázs Orbán says
A big divide has emerged between the political elite and ordinary citizens in European politics, Balázs Orbán, political director to the prime minister, said at the opening of the Budapest Global Dialogue 2026. Speaking on the panel Restoring Civilisational Self-Confidence: Which Values Secure Our Future?, he highlighted how social media algorithms now directly shaped the political content citizens encounter, raising questions about national sovereignty.
Organised by the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation, Orbán said at the event late on Monday that global tech giants controlled what appeared in users’ feeds, influencing perceptions of public issues. “If these systems are not neutral, they can reshape a country’s political environment,” he warned, casting the issue as one of democratic integrity and sovereignty, not just free speech.
While acknowledging that Hungary’s size and the limited reach of the Hungarian language made creating a domestic social media platform impractical, he stressed the need for fair and neutral conditions on international platforms to ensure democratic decision-making. “These are goals Europe and individual nations must achieve in the next decade,” he said.
Orbán underscored the importance of elections and called for political change in Europe, aiming to replace the liberal leadership by 2029. Without this shift, he warned, Europe risked being drawn into full-scale war.
He contrasted the US government’s pro-peace approach to ending the Ukraine war with Brussels’ interest in prolonging conflict, saying that “peace is Europe’s fundamental interest“.
“The era of neoliberal globalism is over; now is the age of nations,” he declared, arguing that successful countries would prioritise sovereignty, security, and energy independence in their policies.
The panel also included Sohrab Ahmari, US editor of UnHerd, Paul Coleman, executive director of ADF International, and Sarah B. Rogers, US States Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
If you missed our previous USA-related news:
Pretty ironic that our Politicians, who systematically consolidated friendly control over much of Hungarian media through allied oligarchs, are now concerned about who controls information flows?
“Sovereignty!” now apparently means controlling the platforms our Politicians friends, family and toadies don’t own or control yet.