Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday he was ready to march to Brussels and "occupy" the heart of the EU ahead of European Parliament elections, while opposition parties held anti-government rallies across Budapest.
Orban, a nationalist who has been in power for 14 years, is hoping his Fidesz party will gain from a rise in far-right support across Europe as he prepares to take over the European Union's rotating presidency for the second half of the year.
Speaking at a rally in Budapest celebrating Hungary's national day, which commemorates the 1848 Hungarian Revolution against the Habsburg monarchy, Orban said the European elections were a chance to stand up for Hungary.
"If we want to defend Hungary's freedom and sovereignty, we have no other choice but to occupy Brussels," Orban told the gathering of about 1,000 of his supporters.
"We will march to Brussels and bring the change to the European Union ourselves."
Orban has long been at odds with other EU members over a range of issues, including refusing to send weapons to Kyiv and maintaining economic ties with Moscow since Russian forces invaded Ukraine in 2022.
He said EU actions were hitting farmers, hurting the middle class, damaging companies, "and on top of all that, (taking) Europe into war".
"We will not accept that Brussels left Europeans alone, moreover, it turned against them," Orban said.
Opposition parties held rallies later in the day, with several thousand attending an event organised by Peter Magyar, a businessman formerly close to Fidesz who said that he would soon launch a new party to challenge Orban's rule.
"No matter what faults the European Union has, this is the club that we are a member of," Magyar said, stressing the importance of working together with Brussels.
Magyar last month unleashed incendiary comments about the inner workings of Hungary's government.
"It is possible to live without democracy, but not really worth it," he said on Friday, adding that Orban's regime can be defeated in democratic elections, "maybe sooner than many think".
According to data by pollster Median, published by news weekly HVG this week, 68% of voters have heard of Magyar's entry into the political field and 13% of those said that they were likely to support his party.
