A day after Hungarians voted in the European Parliament elections, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government declared a landslide victory, but in his victory speech he made no acknowledgement of his party’s worst performance in an EU election since Hungary joined the bloc two decades ago.
This lackluster result can be largely attributed to the rise of a new political force in Hungary: Peter Magyar, a former insider in Orban’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition government, who broke with the party and announced his intention to start a mass movement to overthrow Orban and dismantle the dictatorship.
Eleven of Hungary’s 21 EU representatives are from Fidesz, more than any other party in the country. The government, which won 44 percent of the vote in Sunday’s vote, said the result was a clear indication of overwhelming support for Orban’s far-right nationalism.
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“Never before have so many people – 2,015,000 – voted for Fidesz-KDNP in European elections,” spokesman Zoltan Kovács wrote on Monday on social media platform X. “The message is clear: Hungarians say no to war, immigration and gender ideology.”
Still, Fidesz has never performed so badly in a European Union election since joining in 2004. Its vote share fell sharply from 52% in the 2019 poll and it lost two seats in the European Parliament.
Andras Biro-Nagy, an analyst and director at the Budapest-based think tank Policy Solutions, said Orban’s power, which he returned to power in 2010, has never been more at risk.
“We are in uncharted territory because until now it was unimaginable that a single party could seriously challenge Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,” Biro-Nagy said.
FILE – Prime Minister Viktor Orban waves after delivering his annual State of the Nation Address at the Várkert Bazar Conference Hall in Budapest, Hungary, February 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Anna Shirazi, File)
Magyar’s new party, Respect and Freedom (TISZA), won nearly 30 percent of the vote on Sunday, giving it seven deputies in the European Parliament. He says the elections will put his movement in an even stronger position to challenge and defeat Orban in the next national vote, scheduled for 2026.
Late Sunday, thousands of Magyar Party supporters gathered along the Danube River to await the results. Addressing a jubilant crowd, the Magyar Party said its election result was a “political landslide victory” that would herald a new era of “good, fair and above all honest” governance.
“Today marks the end of an era,” Magyar said. “This is the Waterloo of Orban’s power factory and the beginning of the end,” he said, referring to the battle that ended the Napoleonic Wars.
Rather than campaigning on a specific party platform, Magyar launched a structural critique of Orbán’s regime, characterizing it as rife with corruption, nepotism, intimidation and propaganda.
He has derided the state of Hungary’s education and health care systems, accused the Fidesz party of creating a class of oligarchs who have become rich on lucrative public contracts, and vowed to forge a more constructive relationship with the EU.
Hungary’s traditional opposition parties have been unable to seriously challenge Fidesz over the past 14 years due to pressure from the Orban government and their own discord and infighting.
“The Péter Magyar phenomenon is a symptom of a deep crisis in Hungarian politics,” Biro-Nagy said. “It not only reflects disillusionment with the Orban government, but also complete disillusionment with the existing opposition.”
“Many people in Hungary are craving something new, something for change, and are ready to support basically anyone who offers the possibility of exerting some kind of power against the Orban government,” he said.
Magyar’s rise comes after a series of scandals that have rocked Orban’s government and led to the resignation of the president and justice minister. A deep economic crisis and the highest inflation in the EU’s 27-nation bloc have also led to a decline in the approval rating of the EU’s longest-serving leader.
Meanwhile, the EU has frozen more than 20 billion euros ($21.5 billion) in aid for Hungary, accusing it of violating the rule of law and democratic standards, and Orban’s friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin has further alienated him from EU and NATO allies.
The five-time prime minister campaigned on an anti-EU platform ahead of the election and cast the vote as a battle to decide whether Russia’s war in Ukraine would drag Europe into it.
He leaned heavily on culturally divisive issues such as immigration and LGBTQ+ rights, and also highlighted his fears that a victory for his political opponents could lead to an escalation of the war that would directly draw Hungary into it.
But Fidesz’s weakening position suggests that Orban’s hopes that EU elections would unite eurosceptic parties and give him a bigger role on the European far right may have been dashed.
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“Orban has already displaced the far right in Hungarian politics,” Biro-Nagy said, “but the breakthrough he hoped for has not materialized at the European level.”
