BUDAPEST – Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party is openly tightening its links with Poland’s main opposition party Law and Justice – even as official relations between the two governments sink to their worst point in years.
On Monday evening, former Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro received a hero’s welcome at Budapest’s historic Uránia art cinema. Ziobro, a member of PiS currently under investigation in Poland, appeared on stage alongside Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, and before an applauding crowd of roughly 400 supporters of the prime minister’s party, Fidesz.
The event was co-organised by the government-backed Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a conservative academy and think tank, and its weekly outlet Mandiner. Officially, the evening centred on a screening of Taking Over, a documentary claiming that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government seized control of Polish state institutions through extra-legal means.
In practice, the documentary served mainly as a backdrop for political theatre as both Ziobro and Gulyás used the stage to reaffirm what they called a “strategic alliance” between Fidesz and Law and Justice (PiS), the national-conservative party that ruled Poland between 2015 and 2023 .
Gulyás praised PiS figures as “friends,” signalling that for Orbán, ties to Poland’s nationalist right now matter more than the strained ties to Poland’s current government.
The European Commission has long accused Hungary and Poland of democratic backsliding and eroding judicial independence. Under PiS’s eight-year rule, both governments used their vetoes to block Article 7 procedures – the EU’s mechanism for suspending a member state’s voting rights over rule-of-law breaches.
After Donald Tusk’s election, Brussels eased its pressure on Poland, but critics say reforms remain incomplete.
If PiS were to return to power, Budapest would gain a key alley in Brussels, allowing Orbán to weaken any pushback against Fidesz.
Asylum tensions
The presence of Marcin Romanowski, Ziobro’s former deputy – who attended Monday’s event as a special guest and drew loud applause – reinforced the message of unity. Romanowski faces 11 different charges in Poland, including participation in an organised criminal group and the attempted embezzlement of nearly €40 million from a fund for victims.
After losing parliamentary immunity and facing an arrest order, Romanowski disappeared and resurfaced in Hungary in late 2024. Budapest granted him asylum, arguing that he faced the risk of an unfair trial in Poland.
Ziobro himself is under investigation for illegally using Pegasus spyware to target nearly 600 people, including opposition politicians, journalists, and even family members of the current Prime Minister, Tusk. He remains free and active in parliament.
The asylum affair has badly strained the official relationship between Hungary and Poland’s governments.
“When Romanowski’s asylum was granted at the end of last year, the [Tusk] government already signalled that this would severely limit bilateral ties,” said Zsombor Zeöld, an expert in Polish-Hungarian relations. Poland withdrew its ambassador in July and has yet to name a replacement.
Personal ties between Orbán and Tusk, which were cordial at the end of Tusk’s first term in government, also rapidly deteriorated after Tusk held the presidency of the European People’s Party (EPP) between 2019 and 2022, a time when Fidesz drifted to the hard right.
Orbán’s party left the EPP in 2021, a move that pleased Tusk, who argued that Orbán’s party no longer belonged in the centre-right group.
The following year, Tusk led his Civic Coalition to electoral success. Orbán argued that the Polish leader had switched from a nationalist position to a “pro‑Brussels, pro‑German, pro‑federalist one.”
Analysts now say relations are at a historic low, marked by sharp exchanges on social media between Foreign Ministers Radosław Sikorski and Péter Szijjártó.
“Relations are heated with emotion and poor, rather than frosty,” Zeöld noted.
Networks and patronage
Ziobro has publicly thanked Orbán for supporting Romanowski, calling him “unfairly persecuted.”
Orbán’s chief of staff, Gulyás, has also insisted the asylum decision was neutral, arguing that “legal cases are politically judged in Poland, so asylum requests should be granted to our friends and opponents alike.”
Yet Romanowski’s financial circumstances suggest he has close ties to Orbán’s circles.
Poland’s public broadcaster TVP’s investigative program Raport Specialny located his apartment in an upscale Budapest neighbourhood. According to the investigative Hungarian news outlet Atlatszo, his expenses are covered by his position heading the Hungarian-Polish Institute of Freedom, a body linked to the Center for Fundamental Rights, which is indirectly funded by the Orbán government.
At a reception following the panel – featuring wine from the Hungarian city of Szekszárd – Romanowski declined to comment on his salary.
Back to Visegrád
Gulyás also used the event on Monday to project a broader regional message, framing the Fidesz–PiS partnership as the backbone of a revived Visegrád Group.
Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia formed the political and cultural alliance in 1991 to promote cooperation on regional development, EU policies, security, and shared interests in Central Europe.
Gulyás touted the recent electoral successes of Czech billionaire Andrej Babiš as “a patriotic prime minister now elected in the Czech Republic.” He also pointed to Hungary’s “good relationship” with Prime Minister Robert Fico in Slovakia.
“Out of four countries, we already have three, and we’re waiting for the biggest country, Poland, to join in the next two years at most,” Gulyás said.
In other words, Orbán is intent on re-establishing a platform that would enable him to cast himself as a leader of the regional bloc in Brussels, where his influence diminished after his party left the EPP group.
To “defend Hungary’s freedom and sovereignty, we have no choice but to occupy Brussels,” Orbán said in a 2024 national holiday speech. The theme has since resurfaced regularly in Orbán’s programmatic speeches, most recently in his speech last week to mark the anniversary of Hungary’s 1956 freedom fight against Soviet occupiers.
“One cannot reach an agreement with [Brussels]; they only recognise submission… There is no middle way”, Orbán said.
In other words, Orbán is betting not on Tusk, but on Tusk’s defeat.
(cs, cm)