‘Get your hat and leave,’ Hungary’s Orban tells EU top officials

BUDAPEST: The European Union’s top officials must be replaced as they do not deserve another chance after the impending European Parliament elections, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday.

The nationalist leader faces one of the toughest elections of his 14-year rule with his country’s economy in recession, an abuse scandal striking his family-values platform at its core, and a political newcomer threatening to upend the status quo.

Despite those challenges, Orban’s Fidesz remains the most popular party in Hungary, but the emergence of a former government insider, Peter Magyar, as a vocal critic of the premier has infused the vote with an added sense of uncertainty.

“If you have performed badly over the course of your mandate, put your voters in danger, and if they do not expect anything more from you, there is only one thing left: Get your hat and leave.”

Orban said Europe’s economy was in decline and he also criticised the West’s policy of supporting Ukraine’s war effort against Russia’s invasion, which he said could spill over into a broader conflict unless the EU changed tack.