Oct. 15, 2024, 5:49 p.m.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has a vision for what the world should look like in November.
European Union leaders will meet in Hungary’s capital, Budapest, only two days after the U.S. presidential election. If former President Trump wins, Orbán will personally pop “several bottles of champagne,” he said last week during a visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. Orbán hopes that a Trump win, quickly followed by the gathering of heads of state in his country, will be an occasion for celebration and a win for his brand of right-wing populism on the global stage.
Indeed, Trump has lavished praise on Orbán, who has emerged as an aspirational figurehead for many on the political Right in the United States. Trump even used the first and probably only presidential debate to express admiration for the controversial Hungarian leader, who has curtailed press freedoms, seized control of the judiciary, and spread virulent anti-immigrant and antisemitic rhetoric within his own country, drawing censure from the European Union, of which his country is a member.
Experts argue that a Trump win would be an explicit endorsement of Orbánism in Europe at a time when the European political landscape is already moving further right.
“It would be a win for right-wing populist leaders because they will feel empowered in their domestic policies,” said Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. “They will say, ‘Look, Donald Trump doesn’t criticize us, so what we’re doing in our domestic politics is absolutely fine.’ It will legitimize their illiberal views and their domestic politics if Donald Trump gets elected.”
A Trump win would also give right-wing populists more standing within the European Union, Fix argued. Until now, Orbán has been a bit of an outcast within European politics. During his visit to Strasbourg last week, left-wing members of the European Parliament responded to his speech by singing the Italian anti-fascist song “Bella Ciao.” The European Union also launched Article 7 proceedings against Hungary for breaching the European Union’s values regarding civil liberties, rule of law, and democracy and withheld some EU funding from Budapest.
But lately, leaders with similar worldviews have been making gains in Europe, including Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, whose far-right Party for Freedom became the largest in the last Dutch elections. The far-right Alternative for Deutschland has made significant gains in local elections in Germany, quickly rising to become the country’s second-strongest party. The Far Right also finished first in Austria’s parliamentary elections late last month. Even France’s government has experienced a rightward shift.
This political trend has also led to a new smattering of far-right political blocs within the European Parliament. Although the Far Right didn’t emerge as the dominant political force that some observers had feared, the parliament is still further to the right than ever before. Politicians from France and Hungary will now lead a new right-wing political bloc within the European parliament called Patriots for Europe, now the EU parliament’s third-largest political group.
If Trump were to win, these politicians would be seen as having a direct line to the U.S. leader due to their similar worldviews. That would elevate their standing within Europe and make it increasingly challenging to sideline them.
“There isn't a single European country that doesn't have a more or less powerful ‘little’ Trump. All of them have several important policies in common: fierce resistance to migrants, resistance to common EU policies, as well as advocating for the weakening of internal ties within the EU, including the common market and foreign and security policy,” Orhan Dragaš, an expert on security and international relations, told National Journal. “Trump must be rejoicing in the rise of populists and the Far Right in Europe, just as they would all be rejoicing in his victory.”
Many European political leaders who align ideologically with Trump are also less supportive of Ukraine and its war for independence against Russia. Orbán, in particular, has been accused of acting as a back door for Russia within the European Union and has blocked some EU funding for Kyiv. Slovakia’s Fico recently pledged to block Ukraine’s NATO membership for as long as possible. Those voices would also be elevated if Trump is victorious.
Some experts in Ukraine are optimistic that the country’s advocates could persuade Trump to support Kyiv. Many view the former president as both unpredictable and easily swayed. But new revelations from journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book show the extent of the cozy relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, is arguably one of the most anti-Ukraine lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Several diplomats from European countries, who asked to speak on background in order to talk freely, expressed doubts about whether Europe could maintain a steady flow of weapons to Ukraine without the United States. While the European Union provides Kyiv with economic support, no other country produces weapons at the volume of the United States.
“A Trump win in 2024 would pose a grave danger to Ukraine, NATO, and the entire security of Europe. Trump has long admired Putin, aspiring to wield power as he does, and has consistently acted in favor of Russian interests,” said Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and an expert on Russian intelligence operations. “Should Trump win, the U.S. will abandon Ukraine and stop support altogether, something that may have been discussed in the alleged secret calls between Trump and Putin since he left office, including whether Putin demanded Trump intervene in blocking aid to Ukraine. Russia's only hope for success is a Trump victory, and they are once again doing everything they can to assist him.”
Meanwhile, Europe’s increasingly hard line toward immigration policy would also get the green light from Washington.
Immigration is already dominating national political conversations across Europe, and migration policy will play an outsized role in the next European Commission. Vienna will send Magnus Brunner, a former finance minister, to Brussels as commissioner for the EU’s migration portfolio. Austria has already been pushing for more funding for the European Union’s external border, and the country’s chancellor has praised efforts to send migrants to so-called “safe third countries.” European leaders are expected to push for new guidelines allowing for increased deportations.
Given this political reality, many in Europe hope a Kamala Harris win will throw some cold water on the emergent Right. If she were to win the White House, many believe her policies would broadly align with her predecessor's.
“There’s a lot of hope that it would just be business as usual,” Fix said. “Europeans are doing a lot of tea-leaf reading, trying to figure out what exactly Kamala Harris would do. But they’re actually relying on the hope that there would be continuity with Biden.”
