Occupy Brussels! Viktor Orbán’s plan for Europe

In the Hungarian leader, the EU faces a new type of Euroskeptic, one who doesn’t want to leave the bloc but shape it.

Hungary, in Viktor Orbán’s words, is preparing for war.

“We need to go deeper, occupy positions, gather allies and fix the European Union,” the 60-year-old Hungarian prime minister declared in an interview at the end of last year. “It’s not enough to be angry. We need to take over Brussels.”

Orbán has long railed against the EU, using it as a scapegoat to rile up populist support and casting his country’s relationship with Brussels as an us-versus-them battle to hammer home a right-wing ideology grounded in nationalism and traditional family values.

But in recent years — and in particular since his reelection for a fifth term in April 2022 — there’s been a shift in Orbán’s tone and a change in his approach to the EU.

In the Hungarian leader, the EU faces a new type of Euroskeptic, one who doesn’t want to leave the bloc but instead shape it, putting his stamp on policies from support to Ukraine to the fight against climate change to migration.

Orbán has poured money and resources into Brussels, erecting the infrastructure to shape the conversation in the EU capital as he prepares to take on the bloc’s rotating presidency in July on the heels of an expected right-wing surge in June’s European Parliament election.