Hungary's Orban urges closer EU union on markets and defence, but not political issues

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - The European Union needs closer cooperation on markets and defence, but not on political issues such as migration, where major differences between countries make this impossible, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday.

"There are issues, even existential issues, to which we don't have common answers, this is war and peace, migration, gender, labour-based society, full employment," Orban told a conference in Cernobbio, Italy.

"If you force us to come together on issues we don't agree, you disintegrate the European Union," he said.

Orban also said that his visits to Kyiv and Moscow earlier this year, which some European Union partners criticised, led him to conclude that there was no intention on either side to make peace and reach a ceasefire in right now.

But the Hungarian leader said communication lines must be open on both sides if Europe wants to end the war in Ukraine.

Hungary, which has maintained close ties to Russia since Moscow's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, has held the EU's rotating six-month presidency since July.

After taking the helm, Orban visited Kyiv and then made surprise visits to Moscow and Beijing before attending a NATO summit in Washington. His self-styled "peace mission" drew sharp criticism from some EU leaders who distanced the bloc from his actions.

But nationalist Orban, who has endorsed Donald Trump for the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, said on Friday peace would never be achieved without keeping communication lines open with both Ukraine and Russia.

Orban also praised Trump's "deal-making approach" and said Europe would have to cooperate with the eastern part of the world to improve its economic competitiveness.

"Our interest is to cooperate well with the West, the United States, and to cooperate economically as much as we can with the East, now China and even with the Russians after the war and on the territories where there are no sanctions, I would suggest to cooperate even with the Russians," Orban said.

Hungary buys most of its gas and crude oil from Russia and Russia's Rosatom is building a nuclear plant in the country.

(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves, Editing by Alan Charlish and Sharon Singleton)