Brussels isn't rid of Orban just yet
He may have been voted out, but the US-supported PfE group is welcoming Orban to their Brussels summit next week as if he is still prime minister.
EU prime ministers and presidents will converge on Brussels next week for their quarterly European Council summit. As usual, each political group will hold its own pre-summit with their leaders ahead of the council. Following April’s Hungarian election, the far-right Patriots for Europe group co-founded by Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban is now down to only one leader in the Council - Czechia’s Andrej Babiš. Nevertheless, Viktor Orban will come to the group’s pre-summit on Thursday as if he is still prime minister. He will reportedly give a press conference. It is not normal for opposition figures who hold no office to attend these pre-summits. PfE is now the third-largest political group in the European Parliament, after the centre-right EPP and centre-left S&D.
This will be the first European Council for Hungary’s new prime minister, Peter Magyar. It will also be the first Council in nearly two decades without Orban at the table. After his defeat, Orban resigned from his seat in the Hungarian parliament and has largely gone quiet on the domestic front. However, burgeoned by support from the US government, it appears he is intent on continuing as leader of the ‘EU opposition’ through his involvement in the MAGA-supported far-right think tanks that have been recently sprouting up in Brussels and are now receiving US government support.