BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Sanctions imposed by the outgoing U.S. administration on Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff Antal Rogan, who heads the secret service, have only strengthened his position, Orban told state radio on Friday.
Orban defended his key aide in his first statements on the issue since the US imposed sanctions on Rogan over alleged corruption earlier this month. Orbán’s government office dismissed the US move as “the last, petty revenge” of the outgoing US ambassador.
“(Rogan) is the minister in charge of national security services, the number one guardian of Hungary’s national sovereignty and if a major power punishes him, it means he is doing his job well, so this is our starting point,” Orban told the radio station.
The nationalist prime minister, a longtime supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, said he foresees a “golden era” for US-Hungarian relations under Trump’s presidency.
Facing strong headwinds at home from a rising new opposition party and a faltering economy ahead of 2026 elections, Orban has vowed to double down on what he called “foreign networks” that threaten Hungary’s sovereignty.
Orban has repeatedly attacked American financier of Hungarian origin George Soros and his liberal views, and says that his foreign policy goal this year would be to “squeeze the Soros empire out of Europe”, and above all out of Hungary.
“It’s time … to eliminate foreign networks that pose a threat to Hungary’s national sovereignty and send them home,” he said. “Hungary will probably be the first country (in Europe) to displace the Soros empire, that’s my definite goal for this year.”
Soros and his Open Society Foundation have been a perennial target of Orban’s Fidesz party over the past decade. In 2017, his government tightened regulations on foreign-funded NGOs, requiring them to register with authorities and publicly disclose their foreign funding status.
In 2018, the Central European University, founded by Soros in 1991, began moving most of its courses from Hungary to Vienna after a long battle between Soros and Orbán’s government.
