Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban – who often clashes with his European Union partners – has made the wild claim that the incumbent Polish government was installed by the EU in a conspiracy to remove the previous populist government from power.
Mr Orban did not provide any evidence to substantiate the outlandish claim. It came two days after he told supporters that the EU is seeking to bring down his populist government and put a puppet regime in place.
The Hungarian leader has been ramping up his attacks on the EU, rallying right wing euro-sceptic parties to create a political force within the bloc.
Poland’s government was elected in 2023, with centre-right prime minister Donald Tusk returning to power nine years after his first stint from 2007 to 2014. The interim period included a spell for Mr Tusk as the president of the European Council between 2014 and 2019.
That 2023 election saw the governing Law and Justice party defeated amid a record voter turnout of nearly 74 per cent.
Orban told Hungarian state radio that top EU officials, including EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, aimed to replace the Hungarian government in a coup similar to that which he claims was seen in Poland.
"It’s not even a secret conspiracy against Hungary, it is an openly represented, announced plan," he said. "The same thing happened in Poland. The Poles also went their own way, they also took an independent Polish policy on migration, gender and the economy."
Orban says Von der Leyen, along with the leader of the bloc’s largest political group, European People’s Party president Manfred Weber, had “openly announced that the conservative Polish government should go and be replaced with a new one”.
He added: “This is how our friend Tusk became prime minister in Poland. The same scenario is now happening in the case of Hungary."
Orban, who has been in power since 2010, after a first spell as prime minister from 1998 to 2002, went on to compare the EU to the Soviet Union. He said: "They’re going to be working on this. They need a puppet government. Let’s speak plainly, every empire is like that. The Soviets were like that, weren’t they?"
Paweł Wroński, spokesperson for Poland’s Foreign Ministry, told the Associated Press: "A free parliamentary election took place in Poland on 15 October, 2023. The current government in Poland, just like the previous governments, was not installed but has been elected and is the expression of the will of the Polish voters."
The EU previously accused Hungary of breaching rule-of-law and democracy standards, withholding billions in financial support from it as a result. To cover the losses, Orban has sought foreign investment and loans from countries such as Russia and China as he continues to distance the central European country from the EU, for which is has held membership since 2004.
