Europeans, with their art-house sensibilities, can rarely match the dramatic heights coming out of Hollywood. At last the action blockbuster genre has crossed the Atlantic, in a series of short films released on social media in recent days. Their unlikely star is one Viktor Orban. Set to rousing music the producers of “Top Gun” might recognise, the clips feature the portly Hungarian prime minister as a latter-day Jason Bourne, striding decisively from motorcade to conference table, then back to his motorcade. Rapid-fire shots leave no doubt as to who is in charge. What the videos lack in terms of explosions and fight scenes they make up for with plenty of world leaders’ hands manfully shaken, documents assertively signed and platitudes emphatically uttered. The impossible mission having been completed, our Hungarian saviour stares into the distance, no doubt ready for a sequel.
The pound-shop James Bond remakes are designed to flatter Mr Orban as he tries to big up his new gig as leader of the country that holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union starting on July 1st. Alas, they are not the only consequence of the EU’s longest-serving national leader taking up the mantle until the end of the year. In what his official videographer has dubbed “Peace Mission 3.0”, Mr Orban has used his new position to engage in some freelance diplomacy in Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing before attending a summit of NATO leaders in Washington. The backdrops of the action-hero videos thus feature cameos by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin as Mr Orban dropped by China and Russia after visiting Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.
Mr Orban is not the first European leader to wilfully confuse being the leader of the country holding the rotating presidency for a job as “EU president”. In fact the gig is largely a ceremonial one, if that. While Hungarian officials and ministers chair meetings of their peers, Mr Orban as national leader has no such responsibilities (since 2009 that job has gone to the president of the European Council, a former national leader who is appointed for five years). But the media-savvy Mr Orban rarely lets a spotlight go to waste. Convinced he holds a special role in the world as a bridge between East and West, democracy and autocracy, he is determined to wade into situations his supposed European allies would rather he stay out of. In a show of solidarity with Ukraine, no EU leader had deigned to visit Moscow since the opening salvoes of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Now, one has.
To the rest of Europe, the Hungarian showman is not so much James Bond as pantomime villain. The union’s 27 members spend interminable hours finessing joint positions on dealing with Ukraine, Russia and China—only to have this diplomatic Johnny English stumble around the diplomatic scene with his own “EU” line. Mr Orban gave no heads-up of his visits and nobody knows quite what their point was. He parroted Russian claims about heavy Ukrainian losses and lauded Mr Putin as “100% rational”—the kind of assertion the International Criminal Court in The Hague would probably be keen to get to the bottom of, given the chance.
There is an irony in the career of Mr Orban. He was once part of a generation of activists who bravely denounced the Hungarian regime under the thumb of Soviet Russia. These days it is he who is repeating Kremlin talking-points he surely cannot believe to an audience he must know does not find them credible either. Like an internet troll who says he is “just asking questions”, Mr Orban has said he is “just making suggestions” and opening lines of communication for a future peace deal. As the action videos came out on Mr Orban’s X feed, so did gruesome ones of a children’s hospital bombed in Kyiv, the doing of one of Mr Orban’s co-stars.
The slapstick diplomatic initiative was greeted in the same manner in which snooty European film critics pan yet another Batman remake. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, accused Mr Orban of appeasement; the Czech foreign minister dubbed him a “useful idiot”. But the most worrying review of all came from Donald Trump Jr, son of America’s past and perhaps future president, who lauded the trip. Mr Orban is a star in America’s conservative circles; the Hungarian picked “Make Europe Great Again” as the motto for his council presidency. “The fear is that Orban is acting as a messenger for Trump, who would endorse his efforts”, says Gergely Polner of Forefront Advisers, a consultancy.
The name is Orban, Viktor Orban
The Hungarian presidency was always going to feature a heavy dose of unwelcome drama. As well as his Ukraine-related antics, Mr Orban is busy mounting an internal offensive against the EU. In the run-up to the presidency he unveiled a new political group in the European Parliament, “Patriots for Europe”, which hopes to unite parties of the hard right into a force that can take on the liberal centre. Soon derided as “Putinists for Europe”, its members feature parties like France’s National Rally and the Freedom Party of Austria with past (if not current) affinities to the Kremlin. Its first task will be to try to prevent Mrs von der Leyen securing a majority in the European Parliament for a second five-year term. The vote is expected on July 18th and will be close, despite the fact that she is backed by the main centrist political groups.
Europeans tired of Mr Orban and his videos may yet try to rein him in. Over the years they have found ways to reprimand him, for example by cutting off some EU funds in response to his government’s hobbling of the rule of law, thus weakening Hungary’s already fragile economy. (By threatening to veto EU business, notably sanctions against Ukraine, Hungary has unlocked some of that money.) Peeved diplomats in Brussels are floating legal plans to bring the Hungarian presidency to a premature end, should the antics continue. Aaaand cut!
To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
© 2023, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com