As summer 2025 dawned, Europe didn’t just experience another ideological gust—it got hit by a political weather front that shifted the pressure system across the continent. In the span of one week at the end of May, Warsaw and Budapest became twin epicenters of the largest conservative gathering Europe has ever seen. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), once an American export, emerged in its own right as a full-fledged European phenomenon—complete with scale, swagger, and a playbook that signaled nothing short of an attempted rewrite of the continent’s political DNA. This wasn’t just a forum. It was a show of force, a rallying cry, and a blueprint for a future the Right now claims as its own.
In Warsaw, CPAC felt like a campaign rally: loud, electric, unapologetically political, filled with thunderous applause and headline-making slogans. Budapest, by contrast, exuded the calm intensity of a strategy retreat, where beneath the rhetorical flourishes lay the early architecture of a new conservative worldview. Together, the two cities—divided by the Vistula and the Danube—formed a symbolic axis: an axis of resistance to globalist orthodoxy, a rejection of Brussels’ moral gatekeeping, and, as Viktor Orbán put it, a campaign to restore Europe’s soul.
The timing was no accident. Just a day before Poland’s decisive second round of presidential elections, CPAC stepped out of the role of sideline commentator and onto the main stage of political influence. The conversations that used to happen behind closed doors were now broadcast from the podium. The conservative movement—long cast as a counter-elite—seized the moment not just to critique the liberal order, but to stake its claim on the future. It wasn't offering edits to the status quo. It was writing a new script.
In that sense, CPAC 2025 wasn’t a conclusion. It was an overture. Not an epilogue, but a spark. It didn’t summarize a moment—it launched a movement. And it arrived right as the winds of Europe’s political climate shifted. This isn’t the Europe where the right is boxed into the margins, fighting for scraps at the edge of political relevance. Across France, Germany, Slovakia, Spain, and Italy, right-wing, Euroskeptic, and anti-immigration parties are no longer just gaining seats—they’re forming governments, rewriting laws, and reshaping norms.
Their language isn’t protest anymore—it’s power. Once-taboo terms like “national preference,” “cultural identity,” “gender realism,” and “border sovereignty” are now showing up in policy papers, parliamentary resolutions, and official platforms. Conservatism in Europe has shed its apologetic tone. It’s demanding a mandate.
This realignment didn’t happen in a vacuum. The return of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025 was more than a political comeback—it was a seismic signal that a different kind of West was rising. One that no longer speaks in the neutral, procedural tones of supranational institutions, but in the raw dialect of nations, identity, and culture. CPAC wasn’t just riding that wave—it became its megaphone, its communiqué, its banner.
And CPAC is no longer just America’s export. Its European version now has a face and a mission. Warsaw stood out as the political front line—a testing ground for a new brand of voter-first conservatism that could tilt not just Poland but the balance of power across the EU. Budapest played the role of intellectual engine room—a think tank dressed as a conference, laying out the philosophy behind what Orbán dubbed “the era of patriots.” An era where European nations reclaim ownership of their histories and futures.
There’s no defined map yet. But the terrain has clearly shifted. And on this new political atlas, two nodes are already blinking: Warsaw and Budapest. What connects them is more than ideology—it’s a trajectory. CPAC 2025 was the opening chapter of a new European vector.
CPAC 2025: Scale, Cast, Message
This year’s Conservative Political Action Conference wasn’t just another meet-up for right-wing diehards—it was a transnational manifesto in motion. Split into two acts—May 27 in Warsaw and May 29–30 in Budapest—it was choreographed with intention. Warsaw provided the electoral punch; Budapest, the ideological depth. North and south, ballot and blueprint. This was no coincidence—it was geopolitics in stagecraft.
The Warsaw leg carried the charged energy of a political convention. Held inside a former central post office turned congress hall, the venue overflowed with more than 2,500 attendees. Delegates poured in from across Poland and neighboring Central and Eastern European states. The atmosphere had more in common with a populist revival than a think tank panel—there were youth wings, patriotic chants, book stalls, flag-waving, and an impromptu “marketplace of ideas” selling T-shirts, badges, and slogans like Nie Bruksela—Warszawa! (“Not Brussels—Warsaw!”) and Bóg, rodzina, Ojczyzna (“God, family, homeland”).
The Patriot Era Expands: Inside CPAC 2025’s Global Conservative Blueprint
In Warsaw, the programming was tight, the tone unmistakably electoral. One after another, speakers took the stage to endorse Karol Nawrocki—a former Interior Minister and hardline firebrand with a no-apologies stance on immigration, security, and national identity. His team had masterfully fused CPAC’s message with a distinctly Polish flavor: exceptionalism, resistance to liberal hegemony, and a call for a return to the country's ontological roots—Catholicism, patriotism, and sovereign selfhood.
Looming in absentia was Nawrocki’s chief rival: Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, the face of the pro-EU Civic Platform. His name was invoked more as a symbol than a candidate—a stand-in for everything CPAC speakers rejected. “A cosmopolitan progressive,” “a Brussels puppet,” “a man ready to trade cultural Poland for a digital prototype of Europe,” as one speaker put it. In this crowd, Trzaskowski didn’t just represent the opposition—he embodied the enemy.
From across the Atlantic, endorsements came cloaked in diplomatic language but packed with unmistakable political weight. Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss and U.S. Governor Kristi Noem offered more than polite greetings. Their remarks were effectively campaign speeches for Nawrocki, highlighting “historic alliances,” “Poland’s frontline role in NATO,” and the strategic importance of “Trump-Warsaw unity.” “Poland” was spoken with warmth, yes—but also calculation. The country was cast as a proving ground, a prelude to a continent-wide conservative resurgence.
Two days later, the entire CPAC operation shifted south. The setting changed, but the stakes remained high. In Budapest, the Gellért Campus conference hall—perched above the Danube—welcomed more than 3,000 participants from 28 countries. The guest list was broader: delegations came from the U.S., Germany, Italy, Austria, Australia, India, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, as well as Georgia, Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. If Warsaw was the battleground, Budapest was the sanctuary.
The centerpiece was Viktor Orbán’s keynote—a nearly hour-long performance delivered without notes, rich in personal anecdotes and historical digressions. Orbán didn’t just outline a strategy; he presented a worldview. The “Patriot Era,” as he called it, envisioned a Europe of sovereign nations, bound not by bureaucratic machinery but by shared civilizational coordinates: faith, language, memory.
One line echoed across social media within minutes: “We don’t want to leave Europe—we want to reclaim it.” The crowd erupted. The phrase quickly became CPAC 2025’s unofficial motto—and the subject of immediate backlash in the Western press, which labeled the speech a “nationalist manifesto wrapped in conservative packaging.” That was precisely the point.
The Budapest chapter was more than a series of panels. It included closed-door strategy sessions on building a conservative ecosystem: joint research hubs, campaign coordination, youth engagement, alternative media development—including platforms immune to Big Tech censorship. In the hallways, a new phrase surfaced with increasing frequency: “the anti-globalist international.” No longer a punchline, it was now a serious ambition—one in which Orbán and allies sought not just to coordinate but to mentor, even architect, a global right-wing framework.
The two halves of CPAC 2025 offered twin pillars of a single project. Warsaw delivered the political momentum. Budapest, the intellectual scaffolding. Together, they forged something Europe’s Right had lacked for decades: a sense of belonging to a force greater than national parliaments or TV studios. This wasn’t just a rally. It was a bid to redefine the European mainstream.
A Global Alliance: From Pat Buchanan to Ram Madhav
CPAC 2025 wasn’t just a gathering—it was a showcase for a transnational right on the move. It didn’t just reflect rising Euroskepticism and cultural conservatism; it sought to build the blueprint for a loosely coordinated, overtly anti-globalist front. Warsaw and Budapest became not just host cities, but symbolic capitals of a continental rightward shift, attracting voices from every compass point, all united in one conviction: the liberal global order must go.
In Warsaw, Liz Truss didn’t mince words. The former British Prime Minister declared the EU a “morally bankrupt bureaucracy,” paralyzed by its green orthodoxy and obsession with open borders. Her tone was pure Thatcher—if Thatcher had had to battle climate policy and TikTok. Truss’ remarks fused 1980s defiance with 21st-century culture war urgency.
In Budapest, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott added a broader lens. He called for “Anglosphere solidarity”—a renewed alliance of the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Their mission? To serve as a cultural counterforce to “climate diktats” and the homogenizing “global language of progress.” Abbott warned against ceding democratic sovereignty to transnational institutions like the UN and WHO, which he described as creeping moral regulators replacing parliaments with protocols.
Perhaps most notable was the presence of Ram Madhav, a key ideologue of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. He drew an arc between Europe’s cultural conservatism and India’s notion of sanskriti—a civilizational continuity grounded in community, faith, family, and ancestral memory. “The Right in Europe and India faces the same challenge,” Madhav argued. “Modernization is being used as a pretext to dismantle rooted civilizations. We are not against progress—we are for progress that does not erase the soul of a people.”
Latin America was well represented, too. Allies of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, advisors to Argentina’s Javier Milei, and conservative activists from Chile made the case for more than just shared talking points. They proposed tangible cooperation: research networks, multilateral coordination in global forums, and joint media platforms to bypass what they described as the ideological monopoly of Brussels and Washington. Their message was defiant: the new South wants independence—not mentorship.
What made CPAC 2025 truly singular was this planetary range. From India to Patagonia, from London to Canberra, it wasn’t an American franchise anymore—it was a political fusion experiment. A voluntary “sovereigntist international” was taking shape. It wasn’t looking for a party line, but for a shared distrust of globalist architecture, liberal media, international NGOs, digital gatekeepers, and moral uniformity.
As American commentator Rod Dreher noted while observing the Budapest summit, “If CPAC in the U.S. is a show, CPAC in Europe is a draft of political theory. It’s not just a podium—it’s a prototype.” That phrase—not a show, but a model of the future—captured the essence of the moment.
Whether this “anti-globalist international” can become a stable structure remains to be seen. Its durability will be tested in negotiations, elections, and day-to-day coordination. But the fact that it exists at all marks a tectonic shift: the global Right is no longer satisfied with national victories. It’s building the foundations of global resistance. CPAC 2025 was its first floor.
Orbán, Hungary, and the Intellectual Engine of the New Right
Viktor Orbán remains the indispensable man of Europe’s resurgent Right. Despite mounting economic pressures and a tense standoff with Brussels, his government continues to serve as a living case study in how national-conservative regimes can endure—within democratic frameworks. But even Hungary’s fortress has begun to crack in 2025.
The warning signs are hard to miss:
- Demographics: Despite years of pro-natalist policies, Hungary’s fertility rate slipped to 1.28 in April—nearly back to its 2010 level when Orbán first took power.
- Economy: Inflation at 5.9% and a budget deficit exceeding 6% of GDP have triggered growing discontent among Hungary’s small and medium-sized businesses.
- Isolation: EU funds remain frozen over controversial judicial reforms, diplomatic ties are thinning, and the UN has criticized Budapest’s clampdown on NGOs.
Still, Orbán clings to his symbolic status as the face of a Europe that refuses to surrender. His rallying cry—“Make Europe Great Again”—works in sync with Donald Trump’s second term and anchors a budding transatlantic alliance of the right. Orbán offers not just policy, but doctrine. He’s less politician now, more patriarch of a movement.
Fractures Within the Right: No-Shows and Silent Rifts
For all its spectacle and momentum, CPAC 2025 also revealed deep rifts within the right-wing ecosystem—chief among them, Ukraine.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni skipped the event, citing a “packed schedule.” Off-record chatter told a different story: rising friction between pro-NATO conservatives and those advocating a détente with Moscow.
The absence of France’s National Rally was equally revealing. Le Pen’s party opted to distance itself from Budapest’s hybrid rhetoric—neither pro-Ukraine nor pro-Russia—which was seen in Paris as politically toxic and strategically incoherent.
Recent election defeats added more friction:
- In Romania, pro-CPAC candidate George Simion failed to stop reformist Nicușor Dan from winning the presidency.
- In Albania, Sali Berisha lost to the ruling Socialists.
- In Austria, far-right leader Herbert Kickl was excluded from coalition negotiations.
The global Right, for all its growing confidence, remains far from cohesive. CPAC’s unity has limits—and they’re becoming increasingly visible.
The Numbers Behind the Narrative: A Statistical Map of Europe’s Right Turn
If today’s European politics resemble stormy seas, the data is our chart. And each figure is a reef, a mine, or a new channel toward unfamiliar shores. CPAC 2025 was not just an event. It became a catalytic center, where for the first time since the 1980s, Europe’s right gathered not as fringe dissenters—but as contenders for history. Still, how stable is their rise? The answer, blunt and empirical, lies in the numbers.
Start with the electoral map. As of May 2025, Politico’s Poll of Polls shows the Right no longer trailing behind:
- In Poland, the United Patriots coalition leads with 41%—the highest support for any right-wing bloc in the EU. This isn’t just a Nawrocki surge. It reflects a decade of cultural groundwork, media strategy, church infrastructure, and CPAC-style mobilization.
- In Italy, Meloni’s Brothers of Italy polls at 29%.
- France’s National Rally: 26%.
- The Netherlands’ Freedom Party: 23%.
- Germany’s AfD: 19%.
- And even Fidesz, battered and bruised, holds a solid 36%.
But numbers can also turn on those who wield them. Hungary’s fertility rate is the time bomb beneath Orbán’s project. When he came to power in 2010, it stood at 1.27. At the 2020 peak of his pro-family campaign, it hit 1.59—a moment of nationalist optimism. Since then, it’s slipped: 1.38 in 2023, 1.28 in April 2025. Right back to square one.
Fifteen years of tax breaks, housing grants, and policy nudges—and yet, Hungarian youth remain skeptical about raising families in a stagnating economy with shrinking opportunities. If demography is biology’s vote on the future, “the patriot era” is losing the ballot.
Poland, on the other hand, offers a different signal: turnout. Voter participation is often a bellwether of national tension and democratic engagement. In 2015, 55.3% of Poles voted. In 2020, 68.2%. First-round turnout in 2025? A record 71.4%.
This wasn’t just a statistic—it was a referendum. The entire country came to the polls like it was a battleground. For the Right, the message is clear: fear, identity, and charismatic leadership can mobilize a majority. For liberals, it’s a red alert: the old consensus no longer sells.
And CPAC itself? Over the past two years, it’s gone from fringe American curiosity to European media juggernaut. In March 2023, it was mentioned 12,300 times in European press. By June 2024—18,700. In May 2025? A record-breaking 25,300 references.
It’s no longer just a slogan exchange. It’s a media machine. CPAC now shapes narratives, sets agendas, impacts campaigns. It’s quoted, debated, attacked, mimicked. It has become the pulse of Europe’s New Right.
Migration: The Nervous System of Political Shift
Migration isn’t just an issue anymore—it’s the operating system of political transformation. An ECFR poll from April 2025 drives this point home:
- In Poland, 64% say immigration threatens cultural identity.
- In Hungary: 71%—the highest in the EU.
- France: 52%.
- Germany: 47%.
This isn’t just fear of the “other.” It’s a sense of cultural siege. The once-marginal “great replacement” theory has gone mainstream. And it converts seamlessly into political capital: budgets reallocated, laws rewritten, borders fortified.
Each of these statistics is more than a data point—they're political tells. And taken together, they form a sharp, urgent picture: Europe is shifting rightward. Not because it’s fashionable. Not because of individual charisma. But because deep fears, demographic realities, and identity crises are finding political form.
CPAC 2025 didn’t invent this wave—it gave it a voice and a banner. That banner is now visible from the Baltic to the Tyrrhenian Sea. And under it, the Right is no longer marching—it’s organizing, campaigning, governing.
A Continent Beneath the Flags
Amid a sea of banners proclaiming “Make Europe Great Again” in Budapest, a new silhouette of Europe is emerging—one where the center of gravity is shifting away from the sterile corridors of Brussels toward national capitals where identity now speaks louder than integration. CPAC 2025 was not just another political conference; it became a declaration of principles, a manifesto of intent. It was a bold statement that Europe’s right is done playing the role of opposition or counterculture. The goal now is to rewrite the architecture of European politics itself.
The metaphor Viktor Orbán favored—“The Era of Patriots”—was never just rhetorical flourish. It’s a blueprint. The aim is to reimagine the EU, not as a supranational administrative machine, but as a federation of culturally homogenous nation-states anchored in tradition, faith, family, and sovereignty. And in Orbán’s ambitious vision, Budapest is to be the intellectual capital of this new Europe—a continent where the globalist agenda is sidelined, and the liberal elites of yesterday are pushed to the margins.
But slogans don’t build legacies. For all the fervor and flair, this rising conservative movement faces serious internal headwinds—starting with fragmentation. Europe’s right is far from unified. Disagreements over foreign policy—especially on Russia and Ukraine—remain deep. There’s no consensus on the EU’s role or on basic economic doctrine. The differences between Meloni’s pragmatism and Orbán’s radicalism, between Marine Le Pen’s cautious repositioning and Geert Wilders’ belligerent populism, aren’t just stylistic—they represent fundamentally different political philosophies.
And then there’s the structural paradox. These parties champion national sovereignty yet dream of a transnational alliance—from Warsaw to Madrid, from Budapest to Rome. How do you build a unified conservative bloc out of movements defined by national exception? Without shared foreign policy, without institutional glue, without compromise between competing nationalist visions, this project risks becoming less a political orchestra and more a cacophony of patriotic solos.
There’s also the question of social depth. CPAC energizes the core—activists, ideologues, right-wing media, clergy. But can it reach the broader middle class? Can the movement speak to young Europeans raised in the world of Netflix cosmopolitanism and Instagram inclusivity? Can it move beyond cultural grievance to tackle real economic pain, digital surveillance, climate policy, and the transformation of work?
CPAC 2025 was, without question, a signal—bright, disciplined, ambitious. It showed that the right hasn’t just survived the era of ideological suffocation—it has built networks, created symbols, and crafted a worldview. Yes, it’s controversial. But it’s coherent. What’s missing is structure. What’s missing is the machinery to turn vision into policy.
The stakes are enormous. Can this insurgent Right evolve from anti-system protest into a functioning new system? Can it replace Brussels’ technocracy with ideological cohesion and political maturity? Or will CPAC go down in history as the final flare before liberalism’s next phase of adaptation?
One fact is indisputable: Europe has entered a phase of ideological reckoning. And in that context, CPAC 2025 is no blip. It’s a prologue. A prologue to a long, unpredictable political drama—where the real battle isn’t over who governs Europe, but over what Europe is.