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Far-right leaders Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini will join Viktor Orbán at a campaign rally in Budapest next Monday, three weeks before a parliamentary election that could pose the most serious challenge to the Hungarian leader’s 16-year hold on power.
The event, dubbed “the first Patriotic Grand Assembly”, comes as Orbán’s Fidesz party trails behind Tisza — the party of his rival Péter Magyar— in most opinion polls ahead of the 12 April vote.
Besides speeches from Le Pen, France’s National Rally leader and Salvini, an Italian Deputy Prime Minister and head of the far-right League party, the event will feature Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and Dutch politician Geert Wilders.
In the European Parliament, many of these leaders are members of the far-right Patriots for Europe, which is the assembly’s third-largest political group. Both Le Pen and Salvini have long backed Orbán’s stringent anti-immigration stance and echo his scepticism of toward the European Union.
Ádám Kavecsánszki, chairman of the Foundation for a Civic Hungary—the organization hosting the event—stated in a press release that “we are showing that Europe still has leaders who stand with both Europe and its people.”
Trump’s Budapest visit remains unconfirmed
In early January, US President Donald Trump indicated in a letter that he planned to visit Budapest during Hungary’s election campaign period. Trump considers Orbán as a key European ally and praised him as a “great leader” when the Hungarian prime minister visited the White House in November.
“Your leadership serves as an example to others around the world,” Trump wrote. “You have consistently stood for the principles that make Hungary strong — faith, family, and national sovereignty — and America respects that courage.”
To date, Trump’s visit has yet to be officially confirmed. The American president has also suggested hosting a US-Russia peace summit in Budapest to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine, but the plan fell through due to Russia’s reluctance to participate.
Budapest will also host the CPAC Hungary conference this Saturday, a gathering popular with American and European right-wing figures. No senior members of the US administration have been announced as speakers.
This Saturday, Budapest will also host the European version of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — the United States’ most prominent conservative gathering— though no top US administration officials have been announced as speakers.