A long-planned gathering in a Budapest sports arena took on unexpected urgency on Thursday as European leaders contended with the election victory of Donald J. Trump and the collapse of Germany’s ruling coalition, two pressing issues that added to the tumult of a world already thrown off balance by the war in Ukraine.
Adding to the drama was the fact that the meeting was being held in Hungary, whose authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, has long been at odds with mainstream European leaders and is an ardent supporter of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Orban, without specifically mentioning Mr. Trump or Ukraine, made clear the import of the gathering of more than 40 heads of state and government leaders from the European Union, Ukraine and beyond. “The answers we give now may determine the future of Europe for decades,” he said.
Many of the leaders, despite offering Mr. Trump congratulations for his election triumph, are deeply anxious over what the former president’s return to the White House might mean for American security, trade and foreign policy.
Particularly concerned is President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Stony-faced, he exchanged a frosty handshake with Mr. Orban, who has repeatedly called for an end to the war in Ukraine on terms similar to those proposed by Russia.
It was Mr. Zelensky’s first visit to Budapest since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — a measure of the chilly relations between the two neighbors. Hungary joined European sanctions against Russia but vociferously denounced them, opposed military aid to Ukraine and sought to rally other European Union countries to what Mr. Orban calls a “peace agenda.”
Ukraine and its supporters fear that the return of Mr. Trump will strengthen Hungary’s position at a time of growing peril on the battlefield for Ukraine and of political paralysis in Germany and France, two key backers.
The Ukrainian military has experienced a series of setbacks to Russian forces in recent months in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, and Mr. Zelensky worries that Mr. Trump may curb deliveries of American weapons and join Hungary in calling for a swift peace deal.
Mr. Zelensky on Thursday said that he had a “good, productive” conversation with Mr. Trump on Wednesday. He told European leaders that Ukraine needed to keep defending itself against Russian attacks. “We need sufficient weapons, not support in talks,” he said.
“Hugs with Putin won’t help,” he added in an apparent dig at Mr. Orban, who has met Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, twice since Russia began its full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, and often echoed Kremlin talking points on the conflict.
The meeting on Thursday in a Budapest sports arena was the latest session of the European Political Community, a French initiative that began as an informal gathering for leaders to ruminate on the future but that has been forced by events this week in the United States and Germany into confronting a rush of urgent, current issues.
Mark Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister who in October became NATO’s new secretary general, said that, as leader of the Netherlands, he had worked well with Mr. Trump when he was president.
Mr. Trump, he said, “is absolutely right” to insist that European countries spend more on defense. But, stressing that support for Ukraine against Russia is vital for Americans, not just for European security, he indirectly took issue with suggestions made by Mr. Trump during the campaign that Ukraine was Europe’s problem.
“He is extremely clear about what he wants,” Mr. Rutte said. “He understands that you have to deal with each other to come to joint positions, and I think we can do that.”
Jonas Gahr Store, the prime minister of Norway, said North Korea’s recent deployment of troops to Ukraine to help Russia was a “dead serious issue for Ukraine” and “also a large political issue that the U.S. has to fully address.”
Ian Lesser, the director of the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund, said Mr. Trump’s win had made it clearer than ever that Europe needed to bolster its capacity to defend itself, enhance its military ability and reduce dependency on the United States for key military equipment and funds. But it was unclear if European defense companies would “have the productivity to satisfy the demands in the face of a war in Europe,” he said.
It is also unclear which country would take the lead in doing this. President Emmanuel Macron of France has for years talked of Europe establishing “strategic autonomy,” but his proposals have mostly fallen flat.
With Mr. Macron severely weakened politically at home, Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, struggling with an unraveling coalition and Britain, the continent’s other main military power, self-exiled from the European Union, there is no obvious source of leadership for a serious push to reduce dependency on the United States, analysts say. Mr. Scholz, dealing with the political fallout in Berlin, skipped the initial meetings in Budapest, but was scheduled to arrive later Thursday.
The Budapest conclave, attended by more than 40 heads of state and government, comes at a particularly tense time for Europe. Soon after American voters elected Mr. Trump, a fragile coalition government in Germany, the European Union’s biggest economy, effectively collapsed after Mr. Scholz fired his finance minister.
France, the other main pillar of Europe’s economic and political stability, has also been gripped by political turmoil after Mr. Macron’s decision to call a snap legislative election over the summer that left Parliament deadlocked.
Together, domestic politics in the United States and Europe risk hobbling decisive action at a time when leaders need to make key decisions on economic and trade issues and figure out a way to shore up support for Ukraine.
Campaign threats by Mr. Trump to impose high across-the-board tariffs on imports to the United States have also stirred alarm.
Before European leaders can work out a response, however, they need to sift campaign messaging from serious policy proposals, said Prime Minister Luc Frieden of Luxembourg.
“We now have to see what exactly President Trump will do once he will become president — whether he will apply everything that he said during the election campaign,” he said, adding that Mr. Trump’s intentions were “very vague.”
There’s also concern among officials about how Mr. Orban, a longtime, vocal supporter of Mr. Trump and the host of the Budapest summit, could undermine Europe’s unity in its response to the U.S. election.
Raphaël Glucksmann, a prominent member of the European Parliament, said another big question would be whether the right-wing prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who has cooperated with E.U. leaders and softened her stance on some important issues, will feel emboldened by Mr. Trump’s victory and be less accommodating.
“This is really a weird moment in Budapest,” said Mr. Glucksmann, adding that the mood had shifted so much from several months ago, when the European Commission snubbed Hungary by sending lower-level officials to a summit in Budapest after Mr. Orban met with Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on behalf of the European Union, when the visits where not authorized by the bloc.
Mr. Glucksmann said the Budapest summit, hosted by Mr. Orban after Mr. Trump’s election, was a moment of triumph for leaders who did not champion European values.
“For us, it’s a moment of truth, and it will define Europe for decades,” Mr. Glucksmann said.
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