It is time for a reckoning in the west over Hungary, says US ambassador

The US ambassador in Budapest has said Hungary’s democracy problems and foreign policy divergence from the west can no longer be dismissed as rhetoric and that the time has come for “a reckoning”.

Since coming to power more than 14 years ago, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has concentrated political and economic power in the hands of his ruling party and a handful of businesspeople close to the government, while also nurturing relationships with Moscow and Beijing.

In recent months, civil society groups and foreign governments have raised concerns that the Hungarian government is taking steps to put more pressure on independent voices. Hungary’s trajectory has posed a dilemma for its allies, as the country remains a member of both the EU and Nato.

In a speech on Wednesday, David Pressman, who has served as the American ambassador to Hungary since 2022, said “one needn’t look further than the past six months to recognise that the alibi of ‘just words’ is no longer adequate in the face of the apparent divergences in Hungary’s relationship with the rest of Europe and the transatlantic alliance”.

Orbán shocked allies this summer when he embarked on what he has termed a “peace mission” while his country holds the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency, visiting Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and the US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, a Hungarian decision to ease visa restrictions for Russian and Belarusian citizens has raised security concerns in Europe.

Pressman took aim at what he described as Hungary’s “doublespeak”.

“How can the country of 1956 also be so cosy with Putin’s Russia? How can a country be both a member of the European Union and also at war with ‘Brussels’? How can an ally of the United States also, in the prime minister’s words, be its ‘adversary’? How can a repeated victim of Russian aggression also obstruct efforts to respond to it?” he said.

The ambassador, who became a household name in Hungary – and the target of attacks in pro-government media – for his vocal critique of the government’s foreign policy choices and democratic backsliding, also cautioned about the impact on the state of Hungarian democracy.

“The governing party’s control of the media and its attacks on civil society have created an atmosphere of fear,” Pressman said. “The atmosphere of fear allows corruption to flourish, and influences the government’s choices of its partners, not only at home, but also abroad.”

He argued that Hungary’s allies must face the reality of what is transpiring in the country.

There must be, he said, “a reckoning for Hungary’s allies and partners. We too have to recognise that what we used to dismiss with an eyeroll requires us to look at it directly, and respond to it unflinchingly.”

“The conventional wisdom that the Hungarian government’s communications were ‘just words’ was just wrong. These words are policy. And they are changing Hungary.”

Orbán has vocally endorsed Trump and sought his friendship, while his team has courted conservative circles in the US.

Trump, in turn, has repeatedly praised the far-right Hungarian leader. “They call him a strongman. He’s a tough person, smart,” he said of Orbán during a debate with Kamala Harris.

“Viktor Orbán said it: he said the most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president.”

The Hungarian leader, who has few friends in European democracies and has faced repeated criticism from the US over rule of law concerns and his relationship with the Kremlin, has wagered that his standing could shift with the US election.

A Trump presidency could offer Orbán a hands-off approach, with little or no criticism of Hungary’s democracy woes.

Asked earlier this year about Hungary’s relationship with the US being at a 30-year low, Orbán enthusiastically responded: “Waiting for Donald Trump!”

Pressman, in what could be his last major speech before Americans go to the polls and an Orbán-friendly administration could return to the White House, argued that this approach did not serve Hungary’s interests.

“Prime Minister Orbán has made no secret of who he would like to win. I don’t think actions that risk reducing a security alliance between two great nations into a political alliance between two big personalities services any democratic, allied relationship, anywhere,” the ambassador said.

“If that election doesn’t go the way they hope, their strategy is … to wait. In the words of one senior official, ‘There is no plan B,’” he noted, adding: “Continued recklessness with our bilateral relationship will unavoidably change that relationship.”