The dispute between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Brussels is a fake fight, Róbert Puzsér, the opposition Jobbik and LMP parties’ Budapest mayoral candidate, has said. Speaking at a May 1 celebration in Budapest, he said Orbán needed the European Union’s money and the EU needed a skilled but cheap Hungarian workforce. The EU, he added, was not truly interested in the rule of law in the Carpathian Basin. “They’re not going to liberate us.”

He called Orbán Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “forward officer”, adding that the legacy of Hungary’s founder, King St. Stephen, was that the country belonged to the West. “Two of our revolutions were crushed by the Russians and, given a third, that would also be crushed,” he said. Hungary, he said, had a choice between turning to the East for oil and gas, or to the West for freedom.

When it was put to him that opinion polls had found him to be the least popular politician since the 1989-1990 change in political system, he said the results of surveys could not be taken at face value.