Orbán isn’t as isolated as you think

Mujtaba Rahman is the head of Eurasia Group’s Europe practice. He tweets at @Mij_Europe.

Under the leadership of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a new far-right euroskeptic group — the Patriots for Europe — has become the third-largest bloc in the European Parliament.

The success of Orbán’s initiative is a remarkable achievement. The Hungarian leader has managed to reorganize Europe’s far right around his own image and that of his Fidesz party, which was relegated to the political wilderness after leaving the center-right European People’s Party group in 2019.

The creation of the Patriots group demonstrates how Orbán is far less isolated than initially thought, able to build a coalition of like-minded allies who share his strategic goal — creating “a Europe of nation states.” It suggests far-right groups in the EU are more aligned to this vision than at any time. And they present a direct challenge to the more pragmatic populism espoused by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Orbán has consolidated his alliance with France’s National Rally, the largest far-right party on the Continent despite its failure to achieve a majority in the country’s snap elections. Similarly, the Dutch far-right Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders also moved to the Patriots from the Parliament’s former far-right group — Identity and Democracy — after winning last year’s Dutch elections and entering a coalition government for the first time.

Still, this consolidation won’t quite shift the balance of power in the Parliament and is unlikely to meaningfully affect EU policymaking — at least in the short term.

Centrist pro-EU parties have retained a sizeable majority in Brussels. And alongside the Greens, they easily had enough votes to reappoint European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for a second term, as well as support her legislative priorities after that.

So, the Patriots will remain in opposition, with limited ability to influence the EU’s legislative process. The group’s size will afford it some more funding, visibility and prominence in parliamentary proceedings, but it’ll be denied any significant representation in parliamentary leadership bodies — such as committee chairs.

However, the medium-term challenges are much more concerning.

As mentioned, the Patriots present a direct challenge to Meloni’s “third way” of constructive populism. The European Conservative and Reformist (ECR) group she chairs won’t be merging with the Patriots. And its two principal members — Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and Poland’s main opposition Law and Justice party — have refused to join Orbán.

This means that, for now, Meloni will continue to straddle the ground between the far right and the EU establishment, while keeping her options open. Her lawmakers are now pitching the ECR as a bridge between the two camps. And the fact that National Rally’s advance was checked in the second round of French legislative elections gave her another reason to bide time and continue to work constructively with Brussels, Berlin and Paris to advance Italy’s priorities.

But the ECR is losing ground. Its ambitions to become the third-largest group in the Parliament were thwarted. And despite a strong relationship with Brothers of Italy, Spain’s Vox party left to join the Patriots.

The creation of the Patriots group demonstrates how Viktor Orbán is far less isolated than initially thought. | Carl Court/Getty Images

Moreover, having enlisted the support of the Greens, von der Leyen will now be less dependent on the Italian leader — which partly explains why she abstained from the European Council decision to hand the German another term. It was an attempt to reassert her importance and establish some leverage over von der Leyen in the future.

This is because over time, shifts in the balance of power in the Council — the real seat of power in the EU —are likely to prove more consequential.

Currently, the Patriots only control one seat in the Council — Orbán’s. They do have indirect influence over two more seats as well, the Netherlands and Italy, where the PVV and the far-right League party are partners in their respective countries’ ruling coalitions and can thus exert some influence on the government.

However, the number of Patriots in the Council is likely to grow over time, as several national elections scheduled for the coming months and years stand a good chance of producing more far-right governments. For example, elections are set to be held in Austria in September, where the far-right Freedom Party is leading the polls, and in the Czech Republic next fall, where the nationalist Action of Dissatisfied Citizens party of former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš is firmly in the lead.

So, while far-right parties will continue to struggle with internal divisions over policy, and von der Leyen will still be able to govern from the center, the outcome of several national elections may well give the group more representation. And this development would risk undermining EU cohesion in key areas, most notably the EU budget, enlargement and foreign policy — particularly when it comes to Ukraine.

Through a mix of cajoling and financial arm-twisting, the EU has so far found ways to sidestep Orbán’s repeated vetoes on Ukraine. But a larger, more determined group of reluctant governments would prove much harder to contain.

However, this isn’t a foregone conclusion. Meloni has kept up her vocal support for Kyiv. Slovakia’s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico hasn’t followed through on his criticism of military aid to Kyiv and stopped short of wielding his veto. And the same is true of the Netherlands’ PVV, which moderated its position after agreeing to maintain The Hague’s support for Ukraine as part of a center-right coalition government.

It’s possible that other Russia-friendly far-right parties could be similarly co-opted. But the risk that European cohesion will be compromised — especially if former U.S. President Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November — is now clearly rising.