Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. For this interview recorded on

the 6th of September, I've come to the Ambraceti Forum on the shore of Lake Como, an annual

gathering of politicians from across Europe and beyond. The point here is to share ideas and discuss common challenges, and no doubt this year,

attendees will be reflecting on the electoral success of anti-immigrant, hard-right nationalist

political parties across Europe, from west to east.

Significantly, the continent's most successful and deeply entrenched

hardline nationalist movement, Fides in Hungary, is well represented here, both in the form of my

guest today, Balas Orban, Fides MP, and political director of Prime Minister Victor Orban's

office, and by the PM himself Minister Victor Orban's office and by the PM himself.

Victor Orban has been in power for 14 years. In that time, he's been accused of imposing authoritarianism

at home, of constant feuding with the EU institutions in Brussels, and siding with Vladimir Putin before and after Russia's

2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Until now, Victor Orban's combination of nationalism and populism

has proved to be a winning formula. But our cracks beginning to show and how much appeal does Auburnism really have

beyond Hungary's borders? Well, Balash Orban joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you very much

for the invitation. It's great to have you on the program. For the past 14 years, your boss,

Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has been waging a political war against what he calls the

liberal elite in Brussels. Do you think he's winning that war? It's a long war. We still have time. But we have to take the war because it's about our freedom.

And, you know, I think in European culture, we respect freedom.

The Hungarian people are very much freedom-loving people. They want to decide how to live their own

life, what to do, what is their purpose, what are the rules they want to follow.

And from a historical point of view, also we Hungarians don't like to be dictated from

outside. It doesn't matter from which direction it comes. Unfortunately, the current progressive

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