Orbán Pursues His Peace Mission Despite Howls of Protest from Brussels

At the European Political Community summit at Blenheim Palace, in Great Britain, on July 18, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán continued to urge leaders to push for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. He sent out a message on X, saying “We will find no #peace on the battlefield, but only at the negotiating table. My goal is to convince European leaders to make a shift to a pro-peace policy.” Timed with the gathering there, Orbán’s office released the full text of his July 12 letter to the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, reporting on the visits he had made to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and Washington (cf. SAS 27, 28, 29/24).

That letter provoked a stinging reprimand from Charles Michel, who wrote that Hungary “has no role in representing the European Union”. Even a simple discussion with Vladimir Putin is tabu for Brussels. Note that Viktor Orbán never claimed that he was acting in his capacity as rotating president of the Council, only as the elected President of a sovereign nation.

Just one day before that, the European Commission had told its commissioners to boycott any ministerial meetings that Hungary organizes in Budapest during its six-month presidency of the Council, which began July 1. Various leaders of EU member states have also said they would refuse to attend meetings in Hungary. Then, on July 22, Josep Borrell also issued a blistering denunciation of the Hungarian PM’s initiative, and announced that the foreign ministers’ meeting scheduled for the end of August would be moved from Budapest to Brussels. Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto called the “revenge” of the EU “completely childish”.

But is Viktor Orbán’s mission really so radical as to deserve ostracism? To judge for oneself, it is useful to read the letter the PM sent to Charles Michel. He calls for “maintaining the current high-level political contacts with Ukraine”, but also for “reopening direct lines of diplomatic communication with Russia and the rehabilitation of such direct contacts in our political communication”. He considers that the EU’s policy on Ukraine has resulted in the “global isolation of the transatlantic community” and a loss of esteem and credibility in the Global South. Moreover, he proposes that the EU conduct high-level political talks with China on holding a peace conference. (We would add, that Foreign Minister Wang has confirmed that China is ready to cooperate with Hungary on finding a political settlement to the crisis.)

Concerning his visit with Donald Trump on July 11, Orbán notes that if elected in November, Trump would “be ready to act as a peace broker immediately”, and has “well-founded plans for this”.