Poland and Hungary learn different lessons from history
For decades, the European Union was dominated by a combination of French élan and German economic clout. By the late 2010s, a conservative Budapest-Warsaw alliance seemed poised to challenge this arrangement. The ideological firepower was supplied by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who emerged as an unlikely spokesman for the international right, while Poland’s booming economy and large population lent the partnership some much needed heft. The Polish elections in mid-October not only marked the end of the Law and Justice party’s near-decade of conservative rule; they offered another blow to a Polish-Hungarian relationship already fraying over the war in Ukraine.
