Closer to or Further Away from the Center of Europe? Ambiguities of in the Hungarian National Position in Relation to Germany and German Politics

With Brexit, the geopolitical center of Europe has moved closer to Central European Member States. While Europe takes a more continental look, Germany undoubtedly takes the leading position in EU politics by bringing back the centuries old historical, political debates on the role and influence of Germany in the region.In this paper, we aim to focus on the recent past of the Hungarian foreign and EU politics, and analyse the political discourse on Germany in Hungary. In this respect, we mainly focus on the government’s position. As the milestones of the analysis, we take the 2015 peak of the migration crisis, the V4 common positions and Hungarian leadership in crisis management, the strong criticism of Angela Merkel (as well as Jean-Claude Juncker), the metamorphosis of the relationship to Germany in the EPP (suspended FIDESZ membership), the results of the 2019 European Parliament elections and also the changed interpretation of Christian-democratic traditions of Europe. In this paper, we argue that the Hungarian national position in relation to Germany has altered in the past ten years in accordance with the changed political narrative of the government and that this development can be considered as a major shift in comparison with the first 20 years after the regime change.