Hungary’s PM Orbán is challenging Western democracies

His government introduced anti-gay legislation opposing marriage equality and liberal sex education in schools, in the name of child protection. The Orbán government's position is that a father must be a man and a mother a woman and it banned liberal sex education in schools.

In this Orbán found an ally in Poland but fierce opposition from the EU Parliament.

Concurrent with the current election, the government also conducted a referendum about the validity of its anti-gay and child protection legislations. Its hope was to use a possible positive result to counter the EU Parliament's opposition to its illiberal policies. However, the referendum failed to give a legal victory to the government because only half of the number of voters necessary for a valid result bothered to vote.

Because the majority of those who voted backed the government's position, Orbán is still trying to use the outcome of the referendum to boost his position against the EU's stand.

Following his historic landslide, the fourth-in-a-row, on the 3^rd of April 2022, Orbán gave a rare 90 minute international press conference.

In it, Orbán explained his relationship with Putin and the EU and NATO.

He said that his position on Russia was shaped by Nato's decision in 2008 not to admit Ukraine and Georgia to NATO.

He took this to mean that the new reality of geopolitical politics was a NATO promise not to expand further East, where Ukraine would remain a buffer zone between NATO and Russia. Nor would NATO expand further South, where Georgia would sit between the NATO allies and Russia.

In this situation of relative international stability, he set out to pragmatically develop extensive trade relationships with Russia (and China), particularly in the energy field.

To date Hungary meets 64% of its oil and 85% of its gas needs through Russian imports. And they are at discount prices. Because of its long-term contracts, Hungary receives gas from Russia for one-fifth of its market price. This has helped to protect Hungary from the highly inflationary impact of Europe's long-standing energy supply shortage.

According to the EU in 2019 the Hungarian economy showed the greatest growth in the whole of Europe.

Orbán denies that he was and is a Putin ally. He says that foreign policy cannot be just based on virtuous values alone. There is the need to compromise trade with nations with autocratic regimes too if it is in the national economic interest.