Far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán described the EU on Saturday as a "federalist empire” while calling for an end to the "population exchanges" orchestrated by the bloc. Orbán also accused the EU of leading an "LGBT+ offensive."
During a speech at a university in Romania on Saturday, the Hungarian Prime Minister launched his latest diatribe against the European Union.
"The EU is rejecting the Christian heritage and organising population exchanges through migration", the far-right leader said at the summer university in Baile Tusnad, in Romanian Transylvania, which is home to a large Hungarian community.
With his words, Orbán, who is fiercely opposed to European asylum reform, was making a subtle reference to the Great Replacement Theory. This far-right conspiracy theory claims that the elites are actively organising the replacement of European populations with non-European immigrants.
The 60-year-old claims to be Europe's defender of "illiberal" values, a term he used for the first time in 2014 in the same venue, where he usually makes very virulent speeches. Last summer, he provoked an outcry by criticising "race mixing."
This year, Orbán stated that the Romanian Foreign Ministry gave him a list of topics "to avoid", which included ethnic minorities' rights, national symbols and presenting Western values in a bad light.
"Western values are migration, LGBT [rights], and war. We do not have to put them in a bad light, since they themselves do that," Orbán said, to the applause of the audience.
In constant conflict with Brussels, this time he attacked "federalist governance in Europe", which in his view has led to an "irresponsible empire." He castigated the bloc as "an ageing boxer", "a rich but weak union" that is wrong to cut itself off from Russia. Orbán maintains good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, having opposed both sending arms to Ukraine and international sanctions against the Kremlin.
'Family-friendly nations'
During the speech, Orbán also criticised "the EU's LGBT+ offensive against the family-friendly nations of Europe." This is a recurring theme, with his government having taken a number of measures over the years that have been deemed homophobic – including the latest 'anti-LGBT propaganda' law.
"We have no choice: even if we love Europe, even if it is our home, we have to fight" to defend our Christian roots, insisted the nationalist Prime Minister, in power since 2010.
Orbán's government has regularly drawn harsh criticism from the European Union, who has frozen billions of euros in funds over concerns on the deterioration of the rule of law under his premiership. The European Parliament passed a motion which classified Hungary as an "electoral autocracy."
