Thousands of far-right supporters filled central Milan on Saturday as nationalist leaders from across Europe staged a rally targeting irregular migration and what they cast as suffocating bureaucracy from Brussels, marking the movement’s first major show of unity since Viktor Orban’s election defeat in Hungary. Backers of the Patriots for Europe party, now the European Parliament’s third-largest bloc, gathered before Milan’s Duomo cathedral. A heavy police presence kept them apart from a separate anti-fascist demonstration…

For years, Viktor Orban was the European Union’s perennial blocker. His decisive election defeat in Hungary has now prompted a wave of relief across the bloc. Mr Orban, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, conceded defeat yesterday after parliamentary elections delivered victory to conservative Peter Magyar, a former government insider turned political newcomer who campaigned on a promise of “system change”. Whether the issue was support for Ukraine or sanctions on Russia, Mr Orban repeatedly slowed or stopped some of the…