Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, has claimed a “people’s mandate” of 95% public opposition to Ukraine’s EU membership aspirations after two million Hungarians took part in a ‘national consultation’ on the issue.
The number of votes represents approximately one-fifth of Hungary’s population of almost 10 million. Orbán touted the result as the voice of the people.
“The Hungarian people have spoken: 95% said NO to dragging Ukraine into the EU!” he posted on the X platform on Thursday.
“They said NO to war, NO to economic ruin, and NO to Brussels’ delusions. With over 2 million votes cast, we’re taking our people’s mandate for peace and common sense to Brussels.”
Hungary’s pro-Moscow and euro-skeptic government has held over a dozen ‘national consultations’ since Viktor Orbán was voted in for a second term in 2010. They are non-binding postal surveys accompanied by media campaigns and have been widely discredited for appealing only to party supporters and containing leading questions.
Among the criticisms of the process is that respondents can vote multiple times with different email addresses for the online voting component.
‘Primitive manipulation’
Opposition leader Péter Magyar described the latest poll as a “government propaganda campaign.”
Ukraine’s foreign ministry dismissed the ‘Voks 2025’ poll in a statement as “anti-Ukrainian hysteria” and said most Hungarians are “capable of recognizing this primitive manipulation.”
Orbán’s government “made every possible effort to secure the outcome it desired,” the ministry argued, adding that “the consultations were accompanied by aggressive incitement of groundless hatred toward everything related to Ukraine.”
The consultation’s results were made public as a two-day EU Council summit got underway in Brussels at which Ukraine was high on the agenda.