Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky shakes hands with Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban at a press conference in Kyiv this week. Hungary’s choice of the Trumpian slogan, “Make Europe Great Again”, to represent its six-month presidency of the EU, suggests that it sees its leadership role as less the expected referee and manager of the EU’s agenda, and rather more as agenda-setting, leading from the front. Embarrassed and angry EU leaders are unlikely to follow.
Orbán spoke of how the war deeply affects European security although he and Zelenskiy are only too well aware that the articulation of the EU’s foreign and security policy is a matter not for the presidency, but the union’s foreign policy chief and its council president. Orbán insisted unconvincingly, however, that “we are at Ukraine’s service during the Hungarian presidency.