Orbán under pressure in Brussels as well as at home

As Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian leader, faces his toughest ever electoral challenge back home this week, his political faction at the EU level in Brussels is bracing for a battle on another front.

Orbán’s Patriots for Europe grouping is currently sitting pretty as the third largest faction in the European Parliament with 85 members – but the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) want to overlap them, and need to add five members to do so.

If they succeed in time for the mid-term parliamentary reshuffle in January 2027, the ECR – jointly led by the Poles and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy – will win more power, EU money and influence over legislation in the next two and a half years.

“If we become third we will have more points […] and that means we’ll have more legislative files,” said Jaki.

It also means either Jaki or Nicola Procaccini, his ECR co-chair, would be able to take the floor before French far-right leader Jordan Bardella, who leads the Patriots in Parliament.

But Orbán is not going to lie down and take it. Moments before welcoming JD Vance to the stage in Budapest on Tuesday, he vowed to turn Brussels into a “bastion of patriots.”

Becoming the third largest group would strengthen the ECR’s demand to have more members in the Bureau, the Parliament’s top internal administrative body of fourteen vice presidents, where they are currently represented by two VPs, Antonella Sberna and Roberts Zīle, and one quaestor, Kosma Złotowski.

When negotiations begin in earnest on granting another term to President Roberta Metsola the Patriots – led by Orbán and France’s National Rally – will want to break the informal firewall that blocks them from the Bureau. But dropping to fourth would likely weaken their negotiating hand.

“We are interested not only in criticising but constructive work and a real change in the EU. No one excluded. Anyone who wants to do with us what good for Europe is welcome. We have the ambition to be the most constructive group in the EP,” Jaki added.

Raiding Weber’s camp

The centre-right European People’s Party, the Parliament’s largest group with 184 MEPs, is the main hunting ground for groups to its right.

The national conservative and eurosceptic ECR raided the EPP to bring in two MEPs from the Dutch farmers’ party last month; in January the Patriots poached Laurent Castillo, a French MEP close to domestic defector Eric Ciotti.

The EPP’s remaining French members – long a thorn in Weber’s side – are also a target for the Patriots, as the National Rally continues to argue back home for the union of all right-wing parties before next year’s presidential election.

Both the Patriots and the ECR may seek to capitalise further on the discontent in the EPP, where Chairman Manfred Weber has sanctioned around ten lawmakers for refusing to support Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission in a no confidence vote.

It won’t be easy for the ECR to leapfrog the Patriots.

The Patriots are the latest to draw blood, adding far-right Pole Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik from the Sovereign Nations group last month. EPP stalwarts, such as members of Janez Janša’s Slovenian party, have flirted with joining the Patriots, while a rebellious Hungarian minority party from Romania could well be a target for Fidesz in the Patriots.

ECR co-chair Nicola Procaccini said his focus wasn’t merely on numbers.

“In other words, we don’t just accept anyone just to boost our numbers. We try to make selections based on certain red lines that we believe must be maintained, and this clearly allows us to grow, but in a healthy way, rather than just for the sake of growth.” New joiners to the ECR must sign a declaration stating they support Ukraine.

(bw, cs)