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Trump
presidency will help to ‘occupy Brussels’, says Orbán
Hungary PM
says US leader will bolster Europe’s rightwing forces as nationalist
politicians attend inauguration
Mon 20 Jan
2025 18.13 GMT
Donald
Trump’s presidency will boost rightwing political forces across Europe, the
Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said, as he announced an offensive
“to occupy Brussels”.
A Trump
ally, Hungary’s long-serving prime minister was speaking as European far-right
and nationalist politicians flocked to Washington to welcome the returning US
president at Monday’s inauguration.
Orbán, who
has a record of inflammatory statements about the EU, cited Trump and the
far-right Patriots for Europe group in the European parliament, saying: “So the
great attack can start. Hereby I launch the second phase of the offensive that
aims to occupy Brussels.”
The return
of Trump has unsettled democratic leaders. The French prime minister, François
Bayrou, warned on Monday that France and Europe would be “crushed” and
“marginalised” if they failed to stand up for their interests.
“The United
States has decided to embark upon an extremely domineering form of politics,
via the dollar, via its industrial policy, via the fact that it can capture the
world’s investments and the world’s research,” Bayrou said. “And if we don’t do
anything, our fate is very simple – we will be dominated.”
In an
address hours before Trump took the oath of office with Elon Musk and Mark
Zuckerberg looking on, Spain’s leftwing prime minister urged Europe to resist a
big tech “class” trying to influence western governments and public debate
through its “absolute power over social media”.
Pedro
Sánchez told a conference on artificial intelligence: “Faced with this we have
to fight back and we must put forward alternatives … Europe must stand up to
this threat and defend democracy.”
The
invitation list to the inauguration was a revealing snapshot of Trump’s
political preferences, with far-right figures, even minor politicians and
fringe commentators, in favour, while mainstream leaders were overlooked.
Italy’s
prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was the most senior European leader to attend
the inauguration, having made a short visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf club in
Florida this month, during which Trump described her as “a fantastic woman” who
is “really taking Europe by storm”.
Manlio
Messina, an MP from Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party, said her
attendance “reiterated Italy’s role in strengthening relations between Europe
and the US”.
Notable
absentees included the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who invited Trump to
the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris last month, the German
chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der
Leyen.
Von der
Leyen and her top team had close ties to the Biden administration, working
together on sanctions against Russia and attempting to find compromises on US
industrial policy. Those ties could make it harder for von der Leyen, a German
Christian Democrat and the first woman to lead the commission, to build bridges
with the incoming administration.
At the
inauguration, the EU was represented by its ambassador to the US, the
Lithuanian diplomat Jovita Neliupšienė. The commission’s chief spokesperson
said no meeting had been scheduled between von der Leyen and Trump, “so there
are attempts to establish such a meeting as soon as possible”.
The British
prime minister, Keir Starmer, was also absent, although the UK’s foreign
secretary, David Lammy, said he was confident the UK leader would meet Trump
“within the next few weeks”.
While
leaders from Europe’s traditional centre right and centre left were absent, the
far right was out in force. Those who had been expected to attend included Éric
Zemmour, a former French presidential candidate who has convictions for hate
speech and is an exponent of the far-right “great replacement” theory, Tom Van
Grieken of Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang party, and Mateusz Morawiecki, the
former Polish prime minister for the national-conservative Law and Justice
party.
At least
three officials from Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland were
thought to be attending, including its co-leader Tino Chrupalla.
Chrupalla
told ZDF public television from Washington it was important to show the
incoming US president “respect” but that his nationalist party would push back
against any attempts by Trump to impose tariffs that would hit German industry
hard.
France’s
far-right National Rally party (RN) is also wary of the potential impact of
Trump’s threatened tariffs on European goods. The RN party president told
France 2 he had to think of French farmers and wine-makers who could be
affected by potential US tariffs.
“We can
appreciate the patriotism of Trump without necessarily wanting France to be a
vassal to the US,” Jordan Bardella told the TV station. “I wanted to maintain a
balanced position.”
Some British
Trump supporters have sounded more exultant. “We are so back,” tweeted the
Reform UK party leader, Nigel Farage, who was in Washington to celebrate the
inauguration.
Also in the
US capital was the former UK home secretary Suella Braverman, who was filmed by
Channel 4 News arriving at the airport wearing a Make America Great Again
baseball cap, alongside the actor and “anti-woke” campaigner Laurence Fox.
Braverman posted a video of herself saying Trump stood for “strong and secure
borders”, tax cuts and “an end to this woke nonsense”.
Although
invited, Orbán was not present. But from the other side of the Atlantic, he
took credit for his role in the global movement that again has Trump as its
figurehead. He claimed Hungary’s six-month presidency of the Council of the
EU’s rotating presidency “was the start of the new era” with Trump and the
Patriots group co-founded by Orbán “driving the transformation of the western
world”.
While the EU
presidency had little practical consequence – beyond rows over Orbán’s
freelance diplomacy – Hungary’s government, long criticised for undermining
democratic institutions, is seen as a source of inspiration for the returning
US president.
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