Budapest (AFP)

It is for the candidate of the National Rally (RN) a highly anticipated meeting, a month after the visit of polemicist Eric Zemmour, his potential rival but not yet declared in the French presidential election of 2022, and his niece Marion Maréchal.

Ms Le Pen and Mr Orban will appear together at a press conference scheduled for 1 p.m. GMT, as the Hungarian prime minister has long been careful not to appear with the French leader of the far right.

He has changed his attitude since his party left the EPP (right) group in the European Parliament in March.

The priority now is to build an alliance "to the right of the right", notes Eszter Petronella Soos, a Hungarian political scientist specializing in France.

But "the negotiations with the Italians and Poles are complicated" and the subject has hardly advanced since the publication, in July, of a "joint declaration" between the candidate of the RN and fifteen allies in Europe, including the Hungarian Prime Minister.

"Ruins of sovereignties"

If the experts consider it unlikely that the issue will unblock quickly, Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban both have an interest in showing up side by side.

And to approach sovereignty and immigration with the same voice.

"For Viktor Orban, this is a winning subject," said Ms. Soos.

"While he has lost control of the political agenda due to the recent opposition primaries", united for the first time to defeat him in the legislative elections of spring 2022, "he can reactivate this very useful message for him" .

Already on Saturday, on the occasion of a demonstration bringing together tens of thousands of people in Budapest, he lambasted "European luminaries".

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the 65th anniversary of the Budapest uprising against Soviet occupation, October 23, 2021 in Budapest Attila KISBENEDEK AFP / Archives

"Brussels talks and conducts itself today with us and with the Poles as it is customary to do with enemies," said the Hungarian head of government.

The day before, Marine Le Pen had also supported Warsaw against "the unacceptable blackmail of the EU", after meeting the Polish Prime Minister.

Sunday, on the French channel LCI, the candidate of the RN evoked "a whole series of political forces" eager "to push the end of a European Union become a succession of threats, blackmail, ruins of national sovereignties".

"I'm working on it, this gathering is fundamental," she added.

Discrepancies

However, it will first and foremost have to erase the differences, analysts note.

Because Mr. Orban is, like Eric Zemmour and Marion Maréchal, more liberal economically, and more conservative in terms of societal values ​​than Ms. Le Pen.

An ideological proximity displayed by the trio at the end of September, quick to brandish the "great replacement theory" (conspiracy theory of a replacement of the European population by an immigrant population, Editor's note) on the stage of a "demographic summit" in Budapest.

Eric Zemmour responds to journalists after a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, September 24, 2021 in Budapest GERGELY BESENYEI AFP / Archives

Similarly, they do not hesitate to stir up the propaganda of the "LGBT + lobby", while the French politician did not participate in 2013 in the Manif pour tous against same-sex marriage.

"We are not here to give good or bad points to Viktor Orban," RN spokesman Sébastien Chenu reacted on Monday.

"What interests us is the way in which Hungary resists the European Union, of which it says: + We must resist this migratory submersion +".

Threatened to be dismissed from the first round of the presidential election if certain polls are to be believed, Marine Le Pen "needs to reinvigorate her own image", comments historian Nicolas Lebourg.

And need "to tell this electorate tempted by Eric Zemmour that question of authoritarianism, it also has some stripes", adds the author of an essay on "The extreme rights in Europe".

© 2021 AFP