Donald Trump’s presidency will boost rightwing political forces across Europe, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said, as he announced an offensive “to occupy Brussels”.
Hungary’s long-serving prime minister and Trump ally was speaking as European far-right and nationalist politicians flocked to Washington to welcome the returning US president at Monday’s inauguration.
Orbán, who has a record of inflammatory statements about the EU, cited Trump and the far-right Patriots for Europe group in the European parliament, saying: “So the great attack can start. Hereby I launch the second phase of the offensive that aims to occupy Brussels.”
The return of Trump has unsettled democratic leaders. The French prime minister, François Bayrou, warned on Monday that France and Europe would be “crushed” and “marginalised” if they failed to stand up for their interests.
“The United States has decided to embark upon an extremely domineering form of politics, via the dollar, via its industrial policy, via the fact that it can capture the world’s investments and the world’s research,” Bayrou said. “And if we don’t do anything, our fate is very simple – we will be dominated. We will be crushed. We will be marginalised.”
In an address hours before Trump took the oath of office, with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg looking on, Spain’s leftwing prime minister urged Europe to resist a big tech “class” trying to influence western governments and public debate through its “absolute power over social media”.
Pedro Sánchez told a conference on artificial intelligence: “Faced with this we have to fight back and we must put forward alternatives … Europe must stand up to this threat and defend democracy.”
The invitation list to the inauguration was a revealing snapshot of Trump’s political preferences, with far-right figures, even minor politicians and fringe commentators, in favour, while mainstream leaders were overlooked.
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was the most senior European leader to attend the inauguration, having made a short visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida this month, during which Trump described her as “a fantastic woman” who is “really taking Europe by storm”.
Manlio Messina, an MP from Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party, said her attendance “reiterated Italy’s role in strengthening relations between Europe and the US”.
Notable absentees included the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who invited Trump to the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris last month, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.
Von der Leyen and her top team had close ties to the Biden administration, working together on sanctions against Russia and attempting to find compromises on US industrial policy. Those ties could make it harder for von der Leyen, a German Christian Democrat and the first woman to lead the commission, to build bridges with the incoming administration.
At the inauguration, the EU was represented by its ambassador to the US, the Lithuanian diplomat Jovita Neliupšienė. The commission’s chief spokesperson said there had been no meeting scheduled between von der Leyen and Trump, “so there are attempts to establish such a meeting as soon as possible”.
The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, was also absent, although the UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, said he was confident the UK leader would meet Trump “within the next few weeks”. British sources have been briefing that the UK does not expect to be the first foreign leader to meet the US president.
While leaders from Europe’s traditional centre-right and centre-left were absent, the far-right was out in force. Those who had been expected to attend included Éric Zemmour, a former French presidential candidate who has convictions for hate speech and is an exponent of the far-right “great replacement” theory, Tom Van Grieken of Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang party, and Mateusz Morawiecki, a former Polish prime minister for the national-conservative Law and Justice party.
At least three officials from Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland were thought to be attending, including its co-leader Tino Chrupalla.
Chrupalla told ZDF public television from Washington it was important to show the incoming US president “respect” but that his nationalist party would push back against any attempts by Trump to impose tariffs that would hit German industry hard.
France’s far-right National Rally (RN) is also wary of the impact of Trump’s threatened tariffs on European goods. The RN party president told France 2 that he had to think of French farmers and wine-makers who could be affected by potential US tariffs.
“We can appreciate the patriotism of Trump without necessarily wanting France to be a vassal to the US,” Jordan Bardella told the TV station. “I wanted to maintain a balanced position.”
Some British Trump supporters have sounded more exultant. “We are so back,” tweeted the Reform UK party leader, Nigel Farage, who was in Washington to celebrate the inauguration.
Also in the US capital was the former UK home secretary Suella Braverman, who was filmed by Channel 4 News arriving at the airport wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap, alongside the actor and polemicist Laurence Fox. Braverman posted a video of herself saying Trump stood for “strong and secure borders”, tax cuts and “an end to this woke nonsense”.
Although invited, Orbán was not present. But from the other side of the Atlantic, Orbán took credit for his role in the global movement that again has Trump as its figurehead.
Orbán claimed Hungary’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU’s rotating presidency “was the start of the new era” with Trump and the Patriots group co-founded by Orbán “driving the transformation of the western world”.
While Hungary’s EU presidency had little practical consequence – beyond rows over Orbán’s freelance diplomacy – Hungary’s government, long criticised for undermining democratic institutions, is seen as a source of inspiration for the returning US president.
