What Orban Wants: Inside Hungary’s EU Strategy

The decision to take them down was a rare reversal by a nationalist-populist leader whose party is on track to win more than half of the vote on May 26, giving Fidesz 14 or 15 of the country's 21 seats in the European parliament, versus 12 now, according to the latest polls.

But Orban's government has not abandoned its drumbeat of rhetoric against Brussels: that Eurocrats plan to force Hungary to resettle more refugees; that they are handing out debit cards to illegal migrants; and ultimately, that they want to undermine Christian civilisation in Europe.

In this Hungarian morality play, Juncker and Soros personify all that is evil. Cast as champions of a borderless and multicultural world, Juncker gets the blame for the 2015 refugee crisis — and even for Brexit — while Soros stands accused of pioneering the very idea of open societies.

Against this backdrop, you would think the European Union is public enemy number one in Hungary.

In fact, Hungarian society is one of the most pro-European on the continent, with little appetite for a Brexit-like break-up. According to a survey in March by polling company Medián, 85 per cent of Hungarians support EU membership.

Government officials stress that their beef is not with the EU so much as the European Commission in Brussels. They evoke images of bureaucrats in grey suits dictating laws from ivory towers, having lost all contact with "the people".

The EU itself is a good thing, they say. It just needs fine-tuning. And that is exactly what Budapest claims it is trying to do.

While no EU strategy exists on paper, Szabolcs Takacs, State Secretary for EU Affairs, told the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) that Budapest has a coherent vision.

"We want to defend...