On 22 May 2015, at the European Union’s summit in Riga, Jean-Claude Juncker, then President of the European Commission, greeted Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán mockingly with the words “Hello, dictator!”, after he had just announced to the press in the same tone: “The dictator is coming”. By using the term ‘dictator’, Juncker referred to the authoritarian shift Hungarian society and politics had been experiencing since Orbán’s election in 2010. The choice of that particular word suggests, apart from the limited grey zone of satirical diplomacy among rulers, contempt for a political development which clearly violated the values of European liberalism and parliamentarism. In other words, the message behind the use of ‘dictator’ is to be found in its negative connotation, for Orbán’s legitimacy was actually in line with the rule of law in Hungary.