Brussels has been seeking a change of government in Hungary “with growing intensity and determination” since 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview with the Patriota YouTube channel on Wednesday.

The prime minister said it was not just in Hungary that Brussels wanted to see a change of government, “but in every country that had a patriotic government against the liberal centralisation efforts of the Brussels bureaucrats”.

“It has always been these governments that they have tried to oust, including us, including me,” Orbán said, adding that he could recall “exactly how … they tried to achieve this in each election”.

“We’ve always fended these off,” the prime minister said, adding that “what we’re seeing now” was a continuation of those efforts.

Orbán said the players were always changing, and now “they’re favouring the Tisza Party and Péter Magyar. That’s clear to everyone.”

“The essence of it doesn’t change, in fact it has become more and more shameless,” he said.

Orbán said that at the European Parliament session where he presented the Hungarian EU presidency’s programme, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber had “introduced Magyar as the head of the future Hungarian government to be backed by Brussels”.

He said that the “aggressive uproar” seen today — mainly outside parliament — was not unprecedented, but it had not been common, “and has by now become the voice of opposition politics”. Orbán added that it was important to be able to respond to “all manners of attacks”.

Meanwhile, Orbán said there were two ongoing geopolitical developments today. One of them, he said, was a global paradigm shift, the other a change taking place within the Western world. The East was becoming stronger and the West weaker, he added. The other trend, he said, concerned the liberal-progressive and patriotic worldviews in the West that have been in opposition to one another since the end of the Cold War.

“What’s happening now is that the liberals are losing and the patriots are winning,” he said.

The biggest victory, he added, had been Donald Trump’s re-election in the United States, which gave the Western world a chance to become strong again and define its place in the global paradigm shift.

Orbán said the “last bridgehead of the liberals” was Brussels, adding that patriots were now winning elections everywhere in Europe, and “sooner or later Europeans will have to undertake a patriotic political shift”.

He said the Republican victory in the US presidential election meant that “pro-migration politics is dead in the Western world and gender politics is dead”, adding that he hoped that “the days of pro-war politics are also numbered”. The last European Parliament election ushered in a majority that favours change, with political forces representing change winning in 17 of the bloc’s 27 member states, he said.

Orbán said Hungary was certain to benefit in three ways from Trump’s election win. These, he said, were economic in nature, and it would be determined later “whether Hungarians have hit the jackpot”. He said that while the Democratic US administration had refused to extend the double taxation avoidance agreement with Hungary, this agreement would now be concluded.

That administration, he added, was also “penalising Hungarians for political and ideological reasons” when it came to visa policy, but this, too, would end. Thirdly, Orbán said, American investors would invest in Hungary, adding that he was working to attract investments in advanced technology, bringing jobs and capital to the country. He said the positive impact of the Republican victory on the world would be felt in 1-2 years’ time.

Meanwhile, he said the West, the US and Europe, had spent together a total of around 310 billion dollars on the war, or 1.5 times the size of Hungary’s gross domestic product. He said the US would no longer spend money on the war, and Europe would not be able to finance it on its own.

“If there’s no money, there’s no war,” Orbán said.

“If there’s no war, then peace talks are needed, and the first step is a ceasefire,” he said, adding he was waiting for that and believed a ceasefire would happen.

On another subject, the prime minister said the performance of the Hungarian economy was not dependent on a rebound of the European economy, arguing that the country had two well-though-out financial resources. He said the interest on loans taken out previously would fall significantly in 2025. Whereas in 2024 Hungary had been paying 4-4.5 percent of GDP on interest on previous loans, this will fall to 3.5 percent. Also, several major investment projects have been launched “which the opposition has been attacking in the recent period”, he added.

Orbán vowed that Hungary will not give up any of its sovereignty. The 2026 general election must be won, he said, adding that because the government’s success did not guarantee success in the election, there was still “a lot of work to be done”. He added that he believed their political community would succeed in 2026 the same way it had succeeded in the past.

Orbán: Patriots ’Brussels’ opposition’, aim to be majority

The Patriots for Europe (PfE) are “Brussels’ opposition” and aim to become the majority, Viktor Orbán said upon arriving for a PfE meeting ahead of a European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday.

This will take “a few years”, Orbán said, adding that the Patriots are working towards this goal and deepening their cooperation and friendship.

He said the grouping aimed to “change everything” in Brussels the way Donald Trump had done in the United States.

Orbán called for stopping migration and giving up “all the crazy gender ideas”. He also called for making peace and pushing down energy prices as quickly as possible in order to make the European economy competitive again.

Asked if he would present his peace plan to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been invited to Thursday’s EU summit, Orbán said that the plan was “on the table”, and Ukraine would either accept it or not.

The prime minister said the plan was about brokering a ceasefire for the holidays in order to prevent the deaths of thousands of young people on the front line.

He said a truce like this was not unprecedented in European history, noting that his initiative also proposed a prisoner exchange.

Asked if he was planning to hold bilateral talks with Zelensky on Thursday, the prime minister said he was “always prepared” for all “sensible” talks.

Asked if the PfE group could expand after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced her resignation as president of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) party and is set to be replaced by former Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Orbán said he had spoken with Morawiecki on Tuesday and they had agreed that PfE and ECR would aim to deepen and broaden their cooperation, which later on could lead to “greater unity”.

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