Central Europe’s populists have clamoured to congratulate Donald Trump for winning the US presidential election but it is far from clear that the region will benefit from his victory.

Central Europe contains some of the loudest Trump fanboys in the world, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Polish President Andrzej Duda and former and likely future Czech premier Andrej Babis. 

Some of them, such as Orban, have been proudly (and undiplomatically) backing Trump from almost the very beginning of his political career and they will be buoyed by his victory. Poland’s Law and Justice party will hope Trump’s victory transforms the global political mood and helps it retain the presidency next spring, while Babis will be even more confident of returning to power in autumn 2025.

Conversely, liberals in the region who have been battling populists and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, may be demoralised, though they too congratulated Trump on November 6. 

More widely, European Union leaders could be put on the back foot by Trump’s victory and may struggle to put up the same resistance to the rising tide of populism in the bloc. France and Germany, the traditional motors of the union, are already both convulsed by domestic political turmoil, while in the European Parliament, Orban’s new Patriots for Europe grouping is likely to become noisier and more obstructive.

Within the EU, the radical right is already in charge in Hungary and Italy, and it plays a role in government in the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovakia, Croatia and Finland, and backs the Swedish government. It is also likely to dominate the still to be formed Austrian and Bulgarian governments. 

This growing support – boosted in the future by public backing from the new US president – could make it increasingly difficult for the EU to try to discipline Orban, both for his hollowing out of democracy, corruption and abuse of human rights, and for his more and more overt sabotage of the bloc’s efforts to counter Russia.

“The strong ties that the Trumpian ecosystem has built up with Hungary and, to a lesser extent, other European populist forces in Austria, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and elsewhere could easily shape internal EU politics,” Jeremy Schapiro and Zsuzsanna Végh wrote in a policy brief for the European Council on Foreign Relations last month. “A new Trump administration might be willing to back them in their intra-EU struggles or help out in their individual challenges. In exchange, these forces could use their influence in the Council to, say, reduce retaliation from the EU against his trade policies or for increasing fossil fuel and weapons purchases from the US.”

Within the EU, Orban has been Trump’s greatest supporter and he will benefit the most from his victory. He is set to parade this support and applaud what he regards as the positive transformation in global geopolitics it will bring at the European Political Community (EPC) meeting in Budapest on November 7-8, which he presides over as the current rotating president of the EU.

"A very strong man"

Orban has backed Trump since before the tycoon was first elected in 2016, the first incumbent leader to do so. After eventually meeting his idol in 2019, both Orban and Trump have regularly applauded each other, Trump saying in January this year: “There is a great man, a great leader in Europe — Viktor Orban. … He is the prime minister of Hungary. He is a very great leader, a very strong man.”

Incredibly, Orban, leader of a politically marginalised and economically struggling Central European economy, has now become a hero on the US right, both because of his outspokenness on migration and “political correctness” and his success in repeatedly retaining power in flawed elections.

Even more significantly, the Hungarian strongman has built up strong links between institutions close to his Fidesz party, such as the Danube Institute and the Center for Fundamental Rights, and the US Republican party and associated institutes such as the Heritage Foundation. As part of this, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a love-in for think tankers on the global radical right, has now held its European meeting in Budapest for the past three years.

The Heritage Foundation has used lessons drawn from studying Orban’s semi-authoritarian rule over the past 14 years to plan for a second Trump presidency in its notorious Project 2025. 

“We have entered the programme-writing system of President Donald Trump’s team, and we have deep involvement there,” Orban said in July. 

If Trump indeed follows Orban’s path, the outlook for American politics is bleak, as Hungary is no longer regarded as a full democracy by Freedom House.

Orban will see Trump’s victory as potentially vindicating his lonely stance against effective Western sanctions on Russia and against strong support for Ukraine. Trump has boasted of ending the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office, with analysts speculating that he will force Russia and Ukraine to the peace table by threatening Kyiv with an end to US support, and Moscow with a ramp-up of US support for Ukraine.

"Europe cannot bear the burden of [the war] alone, and if Americans switch to peace, then we also need to adapt, and this is what we will discuss in Budapest," Orbán said ahead of the EPC meeting this week.

If Trump does indeed put pressure on Ukraine to agree to a peace deal that in effect confirms Russian’s territorial gains on the battlefield – and gives it time to rearm and restart the war at a later time of its own choosing – this will be a disaster for Central Europe, which borders the conflict. Trump’s constant threats to downgrade Nato and scale back US military involvement in Europe are also deeply worrying for the region’s security.

Beyond the military dimension, Trump is also likely to ramp up trade tensions with the EU, and try to take advantage of the bloc’s courageous measures against climate change by doubling down on exploiting US fossil fuel resources.

As part of a new trade war, Trump has threatened to impose a 100% tariff on all imported cars, Central Europe’s most important export industry. The new administration is also likely to be even more aggressive in trying to challenge China’s growing economic dominance.

Hungary, which has built strong links with Beijing and is positioning itself as a beachhead for Chinese electric vehicle battery production within the EU, could be one of the most affected by such measures. Even Orban therefore may find that a new Trump presidency – with all its predictable unpredictability – is not always to his liking.