Prime Minister Viktor Orbán used a year-end interview on state broadcaster M1 to cast 2025 as a turning point for Europe and to set out why Hungary will not follow the EU’s trajectory, framing next year’s parliamentary vote as decisive for the country’s direction.
Orbán said the election of a new U.S. president had initially raised hopes Washington would press for a settlement to the war in Ukraine, but that those hopes did not come to fruition. He argued that Washington and European capitals took increasingly different positions: the United States he described as pushing for a negotiated end, while many European governments opted to deepen support for Ukraine with funding, arms and — in his view — steps that amount to a wartime mobilisation of their economies. That divergence, he said, forced Hungary to make a choice.
According to Orbán, Budapest has consistently resisted efforts to pull it into a military alignment to support Ukraine and remained outside such arrangements in 2024. He presented Hungary’s policy since then as deliberately opposite to the path chosen by much of Western Europe: rather than redirecting resources to a war economy, the government has pursued what he called a peacetime economic model focused on family support and domestic purchasing power.
He listed recent measures that the government says reflect that approach: an increase in child tax credits, a lifetime personal income tax exemption for mothers, the reintroduction of a 14th monthly pension payment, an 11% rise in the minimum wage and a fixed–rate housing loan program marketed as Otthon Start. Orbán contrasted those policies with what he characterised as tax increases and higher living costs in Western Europe needed to finance the war effort.
Orbán also addressed economic risks stemming from Hungary’s dependence on European markets. With Germany — Hungary’s largest trading partner, he said — shifting its economy toward wartime priorities, Budapest must look beyond the continent to find buyers for its exports. That goal underpins what he labelled a “connectivity” strategy to open new trade channels.
Looking ahead to 2026, Orbán posed a foreign policy question he said will shape the year: whether the United States can negotiate a peace deal with Russia without European involvement. He warned that the outcome could reshape geopolitical balances and Hungary’s place within them.
Throughout the interview he stressed that Hungary can withstand external pressure and choose an independent course. He portrayed European institutions as having moved into a more militarised mode of decision-making, and argued that the parliamentary election next year will determine whether Hungary follows that path or maintains what he described as sovereignty and peace-oriented policies.