Soldiers of a Hungarian honour guard march in front of the parliament building in Budapest. The EU flag was removed from the parliament building two years ago but diplomatic affairs between Budapest and Brussels have hardly improved | Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images Letter from Budapest Viktor Orbán’s vision of a bigger, looser Europe One of the EU’s loudest critics advocates expansion — because the bigger it gets, the less integrated it becomes.

BUDAPEST — In the two years since the speaker of the Hungarian national assembly ordered the EU flag removed from the parliament building on the banks of the Danube, diplomatic affairs between Budapest and Brussels have hardly improved.

Hungary has clashed with the rest of the bloc over asylum seekers. The EU has withheld funding over concerns about corruption and waged a battle in the courts against Budapest over taxes on media companies, seen by the union as politically motivated. Lest anyone miss how Brussels perceives Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker welcomed him to a summit in Riga last year with the greeting “hello, dictator” and a playful slap on the cheek.

And yet, as relations between Budapest and Brussels have deteriorated, Orbán has continued to push for greater European integration and for expansion of the bloc.

Hungary may be building a second fence on its southern border with Serbia to prevent refugees from crossing into the country. But the country still supports Serbia’s EU accession “within the shortest possible time,” as Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has put it. And Hungary recently reiterated its support for European integration of Ukraine, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“The essence of Hungarian thinking is simple: the European Union is rich, but weak. This is the worst possible combination of qualities” — Viktor Orbán

While Brexit, the refugee crisis and the union’s ongoing economic woes have pushed expansion way down the list of EU priorities, the Hungarians are still gung-ho about further integration — a puzzling stance for a country nicknamed “fortress Hungary” for its predilection for building fences rather than tearing them down.

However, this is key to Orbán’s vision for Europe. The Hungarian prime minister wants to expand Europe but fortify its external borders. In a meeting with his Slovak, Czech, and Polish counterparts on August 26, he proposed the creation of a joint European military.

He also wants cooperation on some trade and technical issues. But, ultimately, he wants national politicians to decide their own countries' fates.

In other words, Orbán is a populist and a EU skeptic but not in the mold of Nigel Farage, formerly of the U.K. Independence Party, who wanted to undo the union — or at least the U.K.’s part in it. Orbán has no desire to pull out of the EU — and doing so would be hugely unpopular. But he has some thoughts on how things could be improved.

Rich, but weak

For the Hungarian leader, an expanded EU translates into a more loosely conceived alliance where members cooperate but national-level governments regain full sovereignty.

“Orbán is not interested in a very well-integrated, centralized European Union,” said Bulcsú Hunyadi, a senior analyst at the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute. And so, paradoxically, EU expansion furthers Orbán’s aims because “the bigger the EU gets,” said Hunyadi, “the less integrated the union becomes.”

In an article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung after the Brexit vote, Orbán outlined his vision for this “community with a population of 444 million” after first waxing poetic about the light on the Rhine and hanging out with one of the architects of the Maastricht Treaty, retired German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Orbán is clearly aware of his own reputation as a provocateur. He just sees himself as a much-needed truth-teller.

When the constitutional court got in Orbán's way, he simply bypassed its authority and wrote the laws directly into the constitution.

“In the former German Democratic Republic — in East Germany – if someone even discreetly tried to talk about obvious problems, the doubter was confronted with a single stupid — but apparently conclusive – argument: ‘Comrade, are you opposed to Peace?’” Orbán wrote. “A crisis-prone EU cannot shut down debate on some fundamental issues by saying that people who doubt the great project should visit Europe’s military cemeteries. The recognition of historical truths will not be enough to ensure the survival of the EU.”

Orbán himself has arguably changed the tenor of the immigration debate in Europe while also becoming the subject of heated debate himself in both Brussels and Washington over illiberal initiatives such as curbing press freedom, rewriting electoral laws and appointing loyalists to key institutions including the central bank and the chief prosecutor’s office. When the constitutional court got in his way, he simply bypassed its authority and wrote the laws directly into the constitution.

When it comes to the EU, Orbán is also clearly impatient with obstacles to his own exercise of power.

“The essence of Hungarian thinking is simple: the European Union is rich, but weak. This is the worst possible combination of qualities,” Orbán wrote. “At the same time, we must avoid unproductive ideological debates on whether we need “more Europe” or “less Europe:” where we need more, there should be more; where we need less, there should be less.”

Orbán’s aim "is to become a leader of the Euroskeptic, populist European forces," said Hunyadi, who is complimentary of the prime minister’s political skill. "He started as a liberal politician and in the middle of the 1990s, he turned his party into a conservative party because at that time there was a vacuum on the conservative side in Hungary.” Now he is doing a "very similar maneuver" by "turning his party from a conservative party into a Euroskeptic, populist, almost far-right party because he thinks this will be the determining force in the near future in Europe."

'Poisonous' migrants

To characterize Orbán as anti-Europe would be misleading. While he’s a populist and a skeptic, the prime minister has never called for a referendum on the country’s membership —and is unlikely to do so since the EU remains quite popular within Hungary.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center conducted earlier this year, 61 percent of Hungarians have a favorable view of the union, making it more popular in Hungary than in Germany or France, where only 50 percent and 38 percent hold similar views. Hungarians — and their leaders — recognize that membership has brought Hungary significant investment, economic opportunity and mobility.

Still, one particularly sore point between Budapest and Brussels remains the issue of refugees and when voters go to the polls next month for a referendum on migration, they will essentially be asked to cast a vote on the EU. The question on the ballot? Whether Brussels should be allowed to force Budapest to resettle immigrants “without the consent of parliament.” At issue is an EU agreement that requires member states to relocate asylum seekers in an equitable fashion among member countries.

The Hungarian government has been stoking anti-refugee sentiments, in part through a nationwide billboard campaign.

“Hungary's relationship with the EU is difficult enough but the referendum makes it even more so,” said Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, vice-president of the European Parliament and a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.

Ahead of the vote, the Hungarian government has been stoking anti-refugee sentiments, in part through a nationwide billboard campaign. One government-sponsored poster reads, “Did you know that since the beginning of the migrant crisis, harassment towards women has steeply risen in Europe?” Orbán last month referred to migrants as “poison.”

A Calvinist by upbringing, the prime minister often talks about his country’s Christian heritage, and for the Hungarian leadership, a core principle is an EU built on “common Christian values” as Zoltán Kovács, spokesman for the Hungarian government, put it. “Most certainly, when we talk about the future of Europe, you cannot disregard it.”

And ultimately it is that — Christianity and history — that seems to inform Orbán’s European dreams.

Orbán used to drive a car with a bumper sticker showing Hungary’s boundaries before World War I when his country was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his view of the past, of course, informs the future. He is highly aware that references to history resonate with many voters, who still see the loss of territory following World War I as a national tragedy.

“Together we Hungarians and Germans can do a great deal for the success of the European project,” he wrote in his Frankfurter Allgemeine piece. “In the tradition of Bismarck, together with our partners we can leap up and grasp the hem of God’s garment as he marches past.”

The images of millions on the march, fleeing war and making their way across Europe in search of a better life, resemble archival footage. And, certainly, this is the gravest refugee crisis since World War II. Along Hungary’s southern border, children of war (and their parents) are stranded in transit zones, barred from entering Hungary.

So it was surprising to read the news this summer that the Hungarian government was hosting summer camps for hundreds of children impacted by war. On closer inspection, though, it became clear: The children weren’t Muslim. They hadn’t fled from the carnage in Syria, Iraq or Yemen. Rather, these were Christian kids from Ukraine, welcomed under a government-sponsored program that would introduce the children to “European values.”