Optimism pervaded CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) Hungary in Budapest as 600 attendees, including prime ministers and political party leaders, gathered to heap scorn on the European Union and global elites as they voiced confidence in the dawn of a conservative golden age.
The conference took place on May 29-30 at the Budapest Congress Center. (One speaker noted with irony that Hungary had come a long way. The first political conference held at the venue was the 13th Congress of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party in 1985.)
The buoyancy of attendees was reflected in the theme of this year’s conference—“Age of Patriots”—referring to the birth of a new conservative era that would reverse the retreat of national sovereignty to supranational organizations such as the European Union.
“The question of sovereignty is also a question of democracy,” said Miklós Szánthó, director general of the Budapest-based Center for Fundamental Rights, which hosts CPAC Hungary, in his opening remarks. He added that if key decisions are made by institutions outside the state, then democracy becomes meaningless.
What distinguished this year’s event (now in its fourth year) from previous ones is that it’s the first to be held during a Donald Trump presidency, imbuing the conference with hope for change.
“The victory of Donald Trump and the fall of the liberals is like a dream coming true,” Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, told the crowd.
To reclaim the European Union for nationalists, America is necessary, he said, describing a “transatlantic deep state” between globalists in Washington, D.C., and Brussels (E.U. headquarters). The money flowing into this deep state needs to be cut off at both ends, he said. That requires U.S. support.
Europeans fed up with the European Union view Orbán as a hero, a European Trump, the first leader on the continent to buck E.U. diktats.
‘A Central Europe bringing hope’
One speaker, Morten Messerschmidt, leader of the Danish People’s Party, expressed the view of most when he said: “A new Iron Curtain has descended across Europe, dividing it into the west of decline and a Central Europe springing and bringing hope.”
Speaker after speaker lambasted the E.U. on a host of issues, identical to those that concern American conservatives—gender theory, open borders, environmentalist extremism and free speech (several referred to a “digital dictatorship”—efforts by European elites to delegitimize valid opposition voices).
“The liberal plan is to change Europe’s old, Christian-based culture. They think that it’s obsolete. They’ve been working for decades to fabricate, to create a new identity, replacing Christianity and country,” Orbán said.
A key element of this plan is mass migration.
Szánthó explained to JNS that globalists want a mixed-ethnicity Europe because it weakens national identity, making it easier for them to establish a continent-sized federal state under centralized E.U. control.
Afroditi Latinopoulou, leader and founder of Greece’s Voice of Reason Party, gave a blistering speech against migration (Greece is one of the entry points to Europe for Muslim migrants from Syria and Libya).
“What we are witnessing is a replacement, a silent replacement, of our people, our culture, our way of life. We see it all across the continent: in cities we no longer recognize; in neighborhoods where women no longer feel safe; in schools where children are taught to forget who they are. This is not compassion. It is the organized demolition of European civilization,” she said.
Several speakers, including Orbán, sharply criticized the E.U. and its globalist allies for underhanded tactics in derailing conservative politicians in elections across Europe, from Spain to Macedonia.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the 61st Munich Security Conference on Feb. 14 was a watershed moment in their view. Vance warned that free speech and democratic norms were under threat in Europe, specifically calling out European courts for cancelling elections.
Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, who received an enthusiastic standing ovation, told the crowd, “As JD Vance put it, democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters.
“One in four German voters cast their ballots for us, the Alternative for Germany,” she said. Yet “leftist elites have excluded our party from government … to exclude more than 10 million voters from proper representation destroys the very foundation of democratic rule.”
Participants argued that a friendly U.S. administration posed a unique opportunity for reform. “We cannot afford to waste the window of opportunity opened to us by Trump. We need to go on the offense,” said Martin Helme, leader of Estonia’s Conservative People’s Party.
The alternative to left-wing ideology offered by Europe’s conservatives is traditional values, which CPAC Hungary presents concisely as “God, Homeland and Family.”
Stressing the first of those, American conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, one of the keynote speakers, argued that the values that underpin Western civilization, such as individual liberty, collective duty, free speech, property rights and family obligations, are rooted in the Bible. “It came from biblical wisdom, the wisdom of thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition.”
His single biggest piece of advice to those present was to attend church. “The restoration of the church is the fundamental basis of a restoration of the West. I say this as a Jew. Everybody who grew up in a Christian household and whose grandparents go to church needs to go to church. … All the things that I just talked about spring from biblical values, and there is no substitute for it.”
When it comes to Israel and the Jewish people, Europe’s present-day conservatives bear little resemblance to their forebears, when antisemitism was a given. Today, they view Israel as a model to be emulated, a small country battling for its national survival against a host of enemies, enemies that they share, as in their view, globalist elites and Islamists have combined forces against the West.
The safest place for Jews in Europe is Orbán’s Hungary.
Several Israelis spoke at the conference, including Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli, Minister of Transport Miri Regev, and Yair Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister’s son.
Chikli praised the “healthy wave” of new nationalist sentiment. “The old, globalist, progressive order is crumbling,” he said. “In this struggle, Israel is not just another state. It is the spearhead. It is not a war over land. It’s a war over humanity’s future: the sanctity of life versus the cult of death, freedom versus tyranny, civilization and humanity versus barbarism.”
He warned against an Islamist takeover of Europe, describing the Muslim Brotherhood as the greatest threat Europe faces.
Messerschmidt noted: “When I was born in Denmark in 1980, we saw no Muslim headscarves in the streets. There were no halal shops, no masks. There were no calls to prayer from the minarets, no violent gangs harassing Jewish citizens or intimidating girls in public spaces.”
While conference participants had nothing good to say about the European Union, their plan didn’t call for dismantling it but taking it back from globalists, who they say have betrayed its original mission—to bring nations together while celebrating their differences.
“Unity, not uniformity,” said one.
A topic on which Europe’s conservatives differ from American conservatives is the war in Ukraine. Judging from the conference, Europe’s conservatives are adamantly opposed to E.U. support for the war, fearing it will spread violence across Europe, and believe Brussels’ real goal is to put Europe’s economy on a wartime footing as a means toward still greater centralization.
In contrast, while support for Ukraine has slipped in the U.S., especially among Republican voters, even those calling for less aid still support Ukraine, viewing it as a small, embattled nation battling for survival against a much larger aggressor.
Yet the common values and shared sense of purpose far outweighed any differences. Matt Schlapp, chairman of CPAC in the U.S., told the audience, “I say to your brave, strategic, critical Prime Minister Orbán, there’s a new breeze blowing, and that breeze is right at our backs, and we’re going forward.”