Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán called yesterday (18 February) for a global alliance against migration as his right-wing populist Fidesz party began campaigning for an 8 April election in which it is expected to win a third consecutive landslide victory.

Popular at home but increasingly at odds politically and economically with mainstream European Union peers, EURACTIV reports Orbán has thrived on external controversy, including repeated clashes with Brussels and lately the United Nations.

Those conflicts, mostly centred on migration since people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa flooded into Europe in 2015, have intensified as the elections approach and Orbán poses as a saviour of Europe’s Christian nations.

“Christianity is Europe’s last hope,” Orbán told an audience of party faithful at the foot of the Royal Castle in Budapest. With mass immigration, especially from Africa, “our worst nightmares can come true. The West falls as it fails to see Europe being overrun.”

Orbán is widely credited for reversing an economic slump in Hungary and controlling its public finances, culminating in a return to investment-grade for its debt, which was cut to ‘junk’ during the 2008 global economic crisis.

To achieve that and hold onto power the prime minister, 54, has used methods that critics have called authoritarian, and picked fights with EU partners, especially in the West. Eastern leaders, most notably in Poland, have followed his lead.

But migration dominates his agenda now.

Orbán said on Sunday that Europe faces a critical fissure between nation states of the East and the West, which he called an “immigrant zone, a mixed population world that heads in a direction different from ours”.

Hungary’s Viktor Orban vows to FIGHT Brussels and predicts EU SPLIT in election rant https://t.co/ribzjPqiVF — Daily Express (@Daily_Express) February 18, 2018

As the West wants eastern Europe to follow its lead, an increasingly vicious struggle was likely, he said, alluding to a plan to redraw the European alliance advocated by the leaders of France and Germany.

“Absurd as it may sound the danger we face comes from the West, from politicians in Brussels, Berlin and Paris,” Orbán said to loud applause. “Of course we will fight, and use ever stronger legal tools. The first is our ‘Stop Soros’ law.”

Orbán has for years targeted Hungarian-born US financier George Soros, whose philanthropy aims to bolster liberal and open-border values — anathema to Orbán, an advocate of a loose group of strong nation states that reject multiculturalism.

The Hungarian leader has advocated “ethnic homogeneity” and compared Soros, a Jew, to a puppet master unleashing immigration onto Europe to undermine its cultural and economic integrity.

A defining moment of his premiership came in 2015, as the migrant crisis peaked: he built a double razor wire fence that became the symbol of anti-migrant sentiment in Europe.

Orbán also said the Hungarian opposition had failed to heed the call of history when it opposed his toughness on migrants.

Voters have responded favourably and Orbán is a clear leader of all polls.

Powerful allies

Orbán has conflated the issue of immigration with the image of Soros, 87, whose name was used in a tough anti-migrant bill sent to Parliament on Wednesday.

Soros, for his part, compared Orbán unfavourably to both the Nazis and the Communists, saying his rule evoked dark tones from the 1930’s — when Hungary was allied with Nazi Germany — and was more oppressive than Cold War Soviet occupation.

Orbán has tightened the screws on non-government organisations, particularly ones funded by Soros, and attempted to close a prominent Soros-founded university.

Attributing to Soros a recent United Nations plan on creating a global blueprint to handle the migration crisis, Orbán said he anticipated that powerful allies would help him prevent the UN from greasing the wheels of migration.

“Soros has antagonised not only us but also England, President Trump and Israel too,” he said. “Everywhere he wants to get migration accepted. It won’t work. We are not alone and we will fight together … and we will succeed.”

In Europe, he cited as allies Hungary’s fellow Visegrad countries Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland, whose ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is also often at loggerheads with the EU. He said a victory for Silvio Berlusconi’s party in Italy’s 4 March election would strengthen the nationalist fold.