Marine Le Pen during her joint press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest in October 2021. ATTILA KISBENEDEK / AFP
Hungary, ruled for 12 years by nationalist Viktor Orban, suddenly entered the campaign between the two towers in France. “When the extreme right starts saying: ‘I choose the journalists who come or don’t come’ (…), it does the same thing as we do in Hungary,” estimated the candidate on Tuesday April 12, Emmanuel Macron, regarding Marine Le Pen’s banning of “Quotidien” journalists from one of his press conferences.
The National Assembly (RN) candidate’s allegiance to the 58-year-old Hungarian leader, known for having built a state on the banks of the Danube with weakened controls and counterbalances, is notorious: Viktor Orban has officially backed the extreme candidate rights in February. But on Wednesday April 13, the far-right leader only admitted to having shared with Mr Orban “a vision” of a “European organisation” which consists of “giving back more power to the nations and to the EU”. [Union européenne] less power.
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In reality, this closeness goes much further. Ms Le Pen’s main proposition, a desire to organize referendums on all sorts of issues, has become a widely used tool in Orban’s Hungary, where two referendums and a plethora of national consultations have allowed the last power obsessions to be established. On April 3, when they triumphantly re-elected Mr Orban with more than 54% of the vote, Hungarians were also asked to comment on “promoting sex reassignment treatments in minors” or “teaching sexual orientation to minor children”. Referendum was voided due to lack of turnout, but the issue dominated campaigning for April’s Hungarian parliamentary elections alongside the war in Ukraine.
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“We try to take what works elsewhere”
In Marine Le Pen’s program, other points are a perfect copy of Mr. Orban’s policy. Starting with “a home loan of up to 100,000 euros”, offered to families and convertible “into a gift” from the third child. Orban carried out almost the same measure, which made it possible to slightly increase the Hungarian birth rate, which, however, is still much lower than the French. “France was a role model for us in terms of demographic policy, and now the RN is looking at what’s happening in Hungary, that’s very good,” said Adam Balazs, Fidesz’s International Relations Manager, Ms. Orban.
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