Page 58 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine December 2024

58 Opinion bne December 2024
Mutual appreciation society: Viktor Orban (left) and Donald Trump. / Photo: Zoltan Fischer / X account of Viktor Orban VISEGRAD BLOG:
Central Europe's populists clamour
to applaud Trump's victory Robert Anderson in Prague
Central Europe’s populists have clamoured to congratu- late Donald Trump for winning the US presidential election but it is far from clear that the region will benefit from his victory.
Central Europe contains some of the loudest Trump fanboys in the world, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Polish President Andrzej Duda and former and likely future Czech premier Andrej Babis.
Some of them, such as Orban, have been proudly (and undip- lomatically) backing Trump from almost the very beginning of his political career and they will be buoyed by his victory. Poland’s Law and Justice party will hope Trump’s victory transforms the global political mood and helps it retain the presidency next spring, while Babis will be even more confi- dent of returning to power in autumn 2025.
Conversely, liberals in the region who have been battling popu- lists and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, may be demoralised, though they too congratulated Trump on November 6.
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More widely, European Union leaders could be put on the back foot by Trump’s victory and may struggle to put up the same resistance to the rising tide of populism in the bloc. France and Germany, the traditional motors of the union, are already both convulsed by domestic political turmoil, while in the European Parliament, Orban’s new Patriots
for Europe grouping is likely to become noisier and more obstructive.
Within the EU, the radical right is already in charge in Hungary and Italy, and it plays a role in government in the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovakia, Croatia and Finland, and backs the Swedish government. It is also likely to dominate the still to be formed Austrian and Bulgarian governments.
This growing support – boosted in the future by public back- ing from the new US president – could make it increasingly difficult for the EU to try to discipline Orban, both for his hollowing out of democracy, corruption and abuse of human rights, and for his more and more overt sabotage of the bloc’s efforts to counter Russia.