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President Macron in Budapest

December 14th, 2021

Commentators seek strategic reasons behind the decision of the President of France to pay a visit to Hungary.

Mr Macron is on a tour of the countries of the region, and apart from meeting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and the other three Prime Ministers at the Visegrád summit, his schedule also included a meeting with the leaders of the opposition.

On Mandiner, Levente László Greczula remarks that despite the obvious differences of opinion between Prime Minister Orbán and President Macron, the two leaders have points in common, including their positive stance on nuclear energy. The same applies to the Visegrád group as a whole, he adds. Commenting on Emmanuel Macron’s meetings with opposition politicians, Greczula has no doubts about whom the French leader would prefer to come out victorious from next April’s elections in Hungary.

On 24.hu, Eszter Petronella Sós points out that both leaders will face elections in four months’ time, and believes that both consider their meeting in Budapest as important for their campaigns. For the Hungarian Prime Minister, the visit by the President of France disproves the opposition argument that the Hungarian government has become unpresentable in the eyes of European leaders. For Mr Macron, on the other hand, active diplomacy is vital to a plan to frame himself as the number one leader of Europe after Angela Merkel went into retirement.

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