The strategy was simple to frame, to seek mediation between Europe and Viktor Orban’s vetoes. But Giorgia Meloni’s mission proved to be anything but smooth. Also because after the meeting in the Vatican with Pope Leo in the morning and before the one at Palazzo Chigi (there will also be one with Matteo Salvini), the Hungarian prime minister unleashed one of his broadsides, stating that “the European Union counts for nothing” and that “Donald Trump is wrong about Putin: I will go to him to get him to lift the sanctions on Russia” on oil. A leap in quality, after the announcement in recent days of the intention to circumvent them.
Before leaving his hotel in the capital, Orban explains his vision of the stalemate, which he himself hopes to resolve with a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin in Budapest, which is still only hypothetical. «We have entrusted the possibility of resolving the war to the Americans and Russians. Unfortunately, we don’t have a role. Europe is totally out of the game”, says Orban to Repubblica and Messaggero, maintaining that “the important point is the future of the European economy, because there is very little left to do about the war”. Statements that do not allow us to imagine wide margins for mediation. At least on the Ukraine dossier, over which yet another clash took place in Brussels a few days ago, precisely in the hours in which the meeting with Meloni entered the agenda of Palazzo Chigi. Ukraine (as well as family and the Middle East) is at the center of the visit to the Vatican, where Orban is received in audience by the Pope and then meets Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State. And also about the conversation lasting about an hour in the government headquarters, where +Europa welcomed him with a flash mob displaying signs such as «Let’s veto Orban».
At Palazzo Chigi the conservative Hungarian prime minister presents himself with a kiss on the hand of Meloni, who has had a privileged relationship with him in these three years. Both for political affinities (they are now also aligned against the reform of unanimous voting in the EU Council, and both have complimented the Argentine president Javier Milei for the mid-term elections), and for that “diplomatic pragmatism” which requires “talking to everyone”. Among the 27, intolerance for Budapest’s rigidity is at alarming levels. “There is nothing wrong with receiving Orban. It’s just having a conversation means thinking the same way”, agrees Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, admitting that he has “a different vision” from the Hungarian leader on the relationship with Russia: “And knowing Meloni, she is in line with herself, not with others”. Indeed, according to some sources, the prime minister’s approach with her guest was calibrated to invite him to find a solution, perhaps by negotiating on other dossiers. Or alternatively to go out at the moment of votes concerning Ukraine, without exercising the right of veto, as in December 2023 when he had a coffee and the EU Council approved the opening of enlargement negotiations with Kiev.
But the search for balancing acts is complicated, as Orban’s lunges demonstrate. The meeting ends without statements to the press. The official note from Palazzo Chigi only indicates the topics at the center of the conversation, in addition to Ukraine, also the Middle East, the European agenda, the initiatives on immigration, and an axis that can arise with “the opportunities offered by the European Safe instrument”, loans for Defense, “evaluating possible synergies between Italy and Hungary in support of their respective industrial and technological capabilities”.
From the Democratic Party they ask Meloni and Salvini to “distance themselves from Orban”, the leader of the M5s Giuseppe Conte claims that the Hungarian prime minister “is very bad, because Putin must be condemned for the aggression, only now we have to find a peaceful solution”. But only the report (“The sovereignist offensive against Europe: the Meloni-Trump axis”) broadcast by Report on Rai3 is indigestible for Orban. Sigfrido Ranucci’s broadcast made “a serious mistake”, according to the Hungarian government. “The title itself reveals the bias of the authors,” says Balazs Orban, Orban’s political advisor, arguing that the report ‘The Great Reset’, cited by the report, is presented “as an attempt to undermine EU integration” but is instead “a comprehensive political document that examines key questions of the future of the Union, in particular how to restore the balance between national sovereignty and institutional centralization in the EU”.