“It wasn’t a deal that President Donald Trump made with Ursula von der Leyen. It was Donald Trump eating Ursula von der Leyen for breakfast,” Orbán fumed Monday morning on his podcast. The Hungarian prime minister is both a longtime critic of Brussels and its leadership and a vocal supporter of Trump and his MAGA agenda.
Orbán added that the U.S.-U.K. deal was much better than the one the EU got. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó wrote Monday on X that the deal is “another sign that Brussels needs new leadership.”
Other Euroskeptics — such as German far-right AfD party leader Alice Weidel and French far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen — have also slammed the deal, but they aren’t alone.
“It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, united to assert their values and defend their interests, resigns itself to submission,” centrist French Prime Minister François Bayrou wrote on X.
Still, many in Europe welcomed Sunday’s deal and the avoidance of a bigger trade war, hoping it would bring about long-awaited trade stability.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a statement that a no-deal scenario would have hit Germany harder, while Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called the deal “sustainable.”
