Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, said the neoliberal world order is over, as it has failed to fulfil the promise of peace and prosperity.

Speaking in Baile Tusnad (Tusnadfurdo), in central Romania, on Wednesday, Orbán added that, like Hungary, several countries were turning to sovereignty, traditional values and Christian Democracy.

Speaking at a podium discussion on the changing world order at the 34th Balvanyos Summer Open University and Student Camp, Balazs Orbán said that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech at the event 11 years ago where he said democracy did not necessarily have to be based on the dominant liberal, progressive global ideology had turned out to be a "prophecy".

The political director said there were various theories as to what the new world order would look like, but it was certain that there would be a transitional period which could last even decades.

He said the transition to a new global order was dangerous when it had to be handled by politicians who managed it poorly, which could not only threaten the success of their own country, but could even lead to a third world war. This had to be avoided at all costs, Orbán added.

He urged a form of international cooperation in which competing global powers did not force other countries to line up behind them. Hungary, he said, was now capable of maintaining good relations with both the United States and China.

Lord David Frost, member of the House of Lords and visiting fellow at the Danube Institute, said the United States had forced progressivism and liberalism onto the world through the United Nations and other international institutions, as well as via development funds tied to the progressive agenda, but it was now clear that a new world order was taking shape.

Marwan Abdallah, vice chairman of Lebanon's International Democracy Union and the foreign affairs leader of the Kataeb Party, said his country did not have the luxury of refusing foreign assistance even if it came with ideological conditions attached.

He said smaller states had a vested interest in the success of large international institutions, but they did not want these institutions to force their will on them.