Balázs Orbán: Hungary Heads Into an Election With Europe’s Future at Stake

As Hungary heads into its April 12 election, Viktor Orbán explains the stakes as a choice between a national path of peace and a Brussels-driven war economy, migration policy, and political compliance

April 12 has been set by Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok as the date for Hungary’s tenth parliamentary election since the democratic transition. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also addressed the stakes of the vote at the ruling party’s weekend congress, where, as leader of the governing patriotic alliance Fidesz–KDNP, he presented the party’s 106 individual candidates. As he put it: Two paths lie ahead of Hungary: one is the Hungarian path, the path of peace. The other is Brussels’ path, the path of war. In April, Hungary will say yes to one and no to the other.

Viktor Orbán recalled that Fidesz has secured four consecutive two-thirds parliamentary majorities, won every local election for two decades, and prevailed in every European parliamentary election since Hungary’s EU accession. As he stated, rather than following the principle of “never change a winning team,” he believes a political community must be continuously renewed — because, in his words, there is only one thing better than Fidesz: a better Fidesz.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán speaking at the ruling party’s weekend congress, where he outlined the political stakes of Hungary’s upcoming parliamentary election.

Why Brussels Wants a Government Change in Hungary

The Hungarian PM also explained why Brussels is determined to replace patriots with a puppet government in Hungary.

As he put it: Brussels has decided. European leaders have decided. They are going to war.
According to Viktor Orbán, the EU elite wants to wage war without having the money to do so. The EU has already spent €180 billion and is now preparing an additional €90 billion in war loans for Ukraine. Everyone knows this money will never be repaid. That brings the total to €270 billion.

Orbán argued that this money can only be recovered if Russia is defeated and forced to pay war reparations. Victory, or an ocean of wasted money. And much of this money was borrowed in the first place. If it cannot be recovered through reparations, it will be taken from Europe’s own economies — meaning today’s leaders are spending the future of Europe’s youth.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has submitted another €800 billion funding request for the next ten years, excluding security and war-related costs, which would come on top. Brussels has issued its order: Hungary must also join the European war economy. The demands made of Hungary have been put in writing.

This, Orbán said, is why Brussels wants a change of government. A patriotic government refuses to implement a war economy and the painful austerity measures already visible across Western Europe.

By contrast, the main opposition force, the Tisza Party — affiliated with Ursula von der Leyen’s political stronghold, the European People’s Party, led by the other German, Manfred Weber, would carry out Brussels’ decisions without hesitation. What their political superiors decide in Brussels, they would execute in Hungary.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán speaking at the ruling party’s congress, where he said: Brussels has decided. European leaders have decided. They are going to war

Irreversible Decisions: War, Migration, and the Struggle Over Europe’s Civilizational Future

Speaking about war, migration, and the gender agenda together, Orbán said that although these issues may seem different, they share a decisive feature: once a wrong choice is made, it cannot be reversed. There is no way back to the point before the mistake.

Migration, he said, is not a theory but a lived experience. Across Western Europe, the consequences are visible. Once countries opened their borders and surrendered to mass migration, they were unable to restore the pre-migration reality — even when voters later elected right-wing, anti-migration governments. The damage had already been done.

Orbán stated that Brussels is relentlessly implementing its plan to turn every non-resisting country into a migration destination. The Brussels bureaucracy does not seek to stop migration, only to manage and distribute it. In his words, Brussels has become an adversary of Europe’s Christian civilization.

He referenced the U.S. national security strategy, claiming that Europe is losing its civilizational roots, but added a correction: Western Europe is not losing its Christian civilization — it is abandoning and replacing it. Yet Europe’s peoples have not lost their faith, their love of country, or their instinct to protect their children. From the liberal elite’s perspective, this makes ordinary Europeans “unreformable.”

According to Orbán, the European liberal elite uses Brussels’ bureaucratic institutions, EU law, and judges in Luxembourg to suppress countries that resist. I spoke about this issue on The Winston Marshall Show as well. I explained that when Brussels seeks to impose decisions through ideological pressure, financial leverage, and legal instruments, this is not cooperation but political coercion. The war in Ukraine is the most severe consequence of this logic: a failed strategy that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, weakened Europe economically, and continues to carry the risk of escalation. Hungary’s position is clear: for us, victory cannot be defined by prolonging or escalating the war, but by stopping the killing and bringing the conflict to an end.

Viktor Orbán argued that this very mechanism of political and legal pressure is what resulted in Hungary being fined €1 million per day. Brussels believed the daily €1 million fine was an amount Hungary could not afford. They were mistaken. Hungary calculated that paying this fine to preserve its Christian civilization is a far smaller cost than the financial burden of becoming a migration country. He also stated that Hungary will recover the money paid in fines.

As a new maneuver, Brussels has now introduced the migration pact, demanding that Hungary build camps for tens of thousands of migrants and immediately take in migrants admitted by Western European states. The Hungarian left-wing opposition supports the pact and repeatedly votes for its accelerated implementation in the European Parliament.

Orbán concluded that one of the election’s central questions is whether Hungary submits to Brussels and becomes a migration country — or continues to resist and repel every Brussels-driven migration initiative, whether backed by the Hungarian left. His message was clear: the resistance must continue.

Orbán concluded that 2026 will be a choice of destiny: peace or war, national sovereignty or submission to Brussels. He made clear that Hungary’s patriotic government cannot be replaced from Brussels, and that Hungarians do not trust foreign-backed proxy candidates.