BRUSSELS. Viktor Orbán doesn't feel like playing pool. «It's late guys, I have an early wake-up call tomorrow». The empty glass of cognac remained on the bar table of the Stanhope hotel. In the background you can hear the horns of tractors, an incessant chorus, a very annoying noise that disturbs the night in Brussels and the sleep of European leaders.
It's two in the morning, the bar is empty, and around Orbán are his staff, the bodyguards dozing a few sofas away, and the correspondents of two Italian newspapers, including La Stampa. They have already spoken to the Hungarian Prime Minister, together with colleagues from agencies and other newspapers, about the case of Ilaria Salis, the Italian activist held in chains in a Hungarian courtroom. They did it, an hour earlier, at the Amigo hotel, where Giorgia Meloni is staying, at the end of the long evening conversation between Orbán and the Prime Minister. There is a years-old understanding between the two which will most likely lead to the Budapest leader's entry into the family of the European Conservatives, Ecr, the group led by Meloni. Orbán is in his shirtsleeves and with his jacket in his hand is heading towards his room. There is time to ask him just this one more question: so will he join the Conservatives? « The idea was to enter before the elections, but at this point we will do it after the vote. However the answer is yes, we are ready and we will join the Conservatives.”
It's a marked road. Even if the Hungarian prime minister, exhausted from the long day, is much less cautious in his forecasts than Meloni will be the next day when they ask her about the arrival of her friend Viktor in the ECR: «It's an open debate, but not these days. It is a debate – repeats the Prime Minister – which will eventually open after the European elections.” It is a turning point that will have its weight in the negotiations, when the June polls will have decreed the winners and losers, and which will influence the meaning of the alliances in Brussels.
Orbán is not an easy partner. And the last few weeks have proven it. A pariah of the People's Party, expelled from the EPP group, a bond that has never been severed with Vladimir Putin, the perennial tension with the European Union which accuses him of continually violating the rule of law, “illiberal democracy” as an invention to be reclaimed. At the head of ten million Hungarians, he has been holding the EU's multi-annual budget and 50 billion euros of aid for Ukraine hostage since December, thanks to his veto power. And now he is at the center of a storm over the undignified conditions of detention to which his country's judicial system reduces an Italian protester.
During the phone call he had with Meloni on Tuesday evening and then at the Amigo meeting, Orbán explains that he finds nothing strange in the photos of Ilaria on a leash. And it is the same answer that he will give to the reporters waiting for him outside: “In Hungary we treat all prisoners the same way.” This is what he reiterated to Meloni. The Hungarian prime minister says he reconstructed the story, putting together the facts and all the details to hand them over to the Prime Minister. «Even the phone calls – explains Orbán – and it is not correct to say that he had no external contacts. I told her that the judiciary in Hungary does not depend on the government but on Parliament. And therefore I cannot influence the judiciary in any way. As you know, the judiciary is totally independent of the government. The only thing I can do is exert influence so that he gets fair treatment, and I promise. All his rights will be guaranteed.”
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