Analyst: Hungary Was Able to Stand Up for Its Interests

Both a NATO and an EU summit were held this week. Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrived at the latter already aware of the results of the consultative survey Voks 2025, and once again exercised his veto regarding Ukraine. Thanks to Slovak President Robert Fico's veto, the plan to ban Russian energy imports wasn't even put on the agenda at the EU summit. The fact that more than two million Hungarians voted against Ukraine’s EU membership, allowing Viktor Orban to take a firm stand at the EU summit, shows that Hungary was able to stand up for its national interests, said Daniel Deak, senior analyst at the 21st Century Institute, in his end-of-season video analysis.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the EU summit (Photo: MTI)

In the first half of the week, the NATO summit sent an important message: with Donald Trump’s election victory, the priorities of the United States have shifted and the goal is no longer to fund and prolong the Russia-Ukraine war, began Daniel Deak in his latest video analysis. The senior analyst at the XXI. Század Institute emphasized that this was clearly reflected in the fact that, unlike in previous years, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited to the closed-door NATO talks—only to the formal dinner held prior to the summit.

The NATO and EU summits delivered important results, Daniel Deak says (Photo. AFP)

In this context, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban commented that the summit "finally focused on ourselves, not Ukraine," referring to the fact that NATO's attention has now shifted from how to continue the war to how to strengthen the defense alliance itself. In line with this, NATO member states agreed to allocate at least 5 percent of their GDP to defense spending in the future, which will reduce Europe’s dependence on US military capabilities.

The EU summit was a different story,

the analyst continued, highlighting that Brussels leadership and several member states remain interested in prolonging the war and continue to propose pro-Ukraine measures.

Arriving at the EU summit, Viktor Orban announced the results of consultative vote Voks 2025: of the 2,278,015 valid votes cast, 2,168,431 were 'no' and 109,584 were 'yes', meaning that 95 percent of respondents reject Ukraine's fast-tracked admission to the European Union. This is a very strong social mandate, with both domestic and foreign policy implications.

Domestically, this sent a clear message to pro-Ukraine political forces, especially the TISZA Party, since twice as many voters returned their ballots in Voks 2025 than participated in TISZA’s own survey in support of Ukraine's EU membership.

In terms of foreign policy, this result gave Prime Minister Orban broader room for maneuver at the EU summit, where he once again used his veto on Ukraine, the analyst said, pointing out that Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico also exercised a veto—this time against the banning of Russian energy—ensuring that the topic didn’t even make it onto the official agenda of the EU heads of state and government.

According to Daniel Deak, the consultative vote Voks 2025, the NATO summit, and the EU leaders’ Brussels meeting all demonstrate that Hungary and Hungarian society are capable of standing up for their interests and resisting globalist pressure to accept policies they fundamentally reject.

Cover photo: Viktor Orban at the EU summit (Photo: MTI)