by V. Zagretdinov[i]
In the last Hungarian parliamentary elections, the opposition led by Péter Magyar won by a significant margin. His pro-European Tisza Party secured 138 seats out of 199 in the unicameral parliament (the National Assembly). This victory opens access to the so-called “constitutional majority”, the threshold required for amendments to the constitution and key cardinal legislation. At the European Union level and among all those concerned, Magyar’s victory has been received as nothing less than a victory for Europe. The phrase of President von der Leyen, “Hungary (or Moldova, Romania, etc.) has chosen Europe”, has already become a routine formula for such occasions.
The victories of right-wing populists across Europe, not to mention the United States, Israel, Latin America and elsewhere, are rooted in structural problems of contemporary democracy and its illiberal economic foundations. This can be understood as a symptom of a broader structural condition. Representative democracy is increasingly struggling to translate majority preferences into effective political representation. These problems have not disappeared and are unlikely to disappear in the foreseeable future, as are the populists themselves.
For this reason, even pro-European analysts do not share the triumphalist tone. Magyar was until recently part of Fidesz, both professionally and even personally. He is the former husband of one of the key political figures in Orbán’s party. He is widely expected to continue, in one form or another, elements of the “illiberal” trajectory associated with Orbán, for the structural reasons outlined above.
Even a two-thirds parliamentary majority does not automatically guarantee systemic change. Constitutional amendments require the involvement of both the President and the Constitutional Court, both of which remain within Orbán’s political orbit. Poland offers a relevant example: despite the electoral defeat of a long-standing populist government and the rise of Donald Tusk’s pro-European coalition, abortion remains effectively banned, despite its prominence as a campaign issue. Beyond that, the structural constraints described above remain decisive.
A closer look at Hungary’s recent political history highlights one key pattern: major political shifts have repeatedly followed leaks of confidential information. In 2006, newly re-elected Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány admitted in a leaked speech that his government had fundamentally misled the public: “We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening, and we lied at night.” The recording, with a lot of swearing, was leaked to the press under unclear circumstances, which ultimately cost him his career and, in the longer term, cleared the way for Orbán. Hungarian society reacts strongly to such stories. On the 50th anniversary of the 1956 uprising, during protests following Gyurcsány’s speech, demonstrators seized two Soviet T-34 tanks displayed as memorials and used them against a police cordon.
Attempts to compromise Orbán through scandals have also existed earlier, including the participation of a conservative MEP in a private man-only gathering during COVID restrictions, as well as the presidential pardon scandal of 2024, which led to the resignation of the then President Katalin Novák and intensified public scrutiny of the political establishment.
However, Orbán long maintained a nominal commitment to European orientation, even as he systematically dismantled its domestic foundations. What shifted more recently was his active alignment with a transatlantic coalition whose agenda is explicitly anti-European: the Trump-Vance politics pressing on NATO, Greenland, and trade; and a broader populist-nationalist network in which Israel’s current government also plays a visible role. This is no longer mere euroscepticism from within as it has been present in Central and Eastern European political culture, it is as a fundamental change of camp that is in open confrontation with Europe.
The leaked exchanges with Moscow, while politically toxic in Central and Eastern European political culture, may in fact serve as a convenient focal point, one that displaces attention from a more uncomfortable reality: that Orbán’s deepest strategic bet was placed not on Putin, but on Trump. And that bet, with its implications for NATO, trade, and European sovereignty, carries consequences of an altogether different order.
The most important issue, however, lies elsewhere. For a long time, pro-EU politicians have tended to focus on right-wing populists as the central political problem, rather than on the structural conditions outlined that generate their support. Thus, right-wing populists are increasingly treated as the main political problem in EU discourse, effectively serving as a scapegoat for deeper structural issues.
This simple mechanism helped restore trust in the European Parliament in 2019, and was successfully used by Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and 2022. Yet the continued neglect of structural drivers of discontent is increasingly pushing European institutions toward more indirect forms of political management. In a context of the growing electoral strength of populist parties across Western European party systems, this started to include greater reliance on judicial, constitutional, or electoral-administrative mechanisms that may constrain the electoral viability of certain candidates, as seen in Romania (2024) or France (2025).
Thus, a tactical electoral victory over Orbán or his political heirs does not alter the underlying systemic dynamics.
[i] Ph.D. Candidate, Faculty of Law, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Lomonosov Moscow State University; LL.M. in Private Law, Russia; Master of Science (London School of Economics), Moscow, Russia (e-mail: v.zagretdinov@gmail.com).
References
PBS NewsHour, Hungary’s President Resigns after Pardoning Man Convicted in Child Sexual Abuse Case, 10 February 2024, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/hungarys-president-resigns-after-pardoning-man-convicted-in-child-sexual-abuse-case
RFE/RL, Hungarian MEP Resigns after Police Raid on Brussels ‘Sex Party’ during COVID Curfew, 3 December 2020, https://www.rferl.org/a/hungarian-mep-resigns-sex-party-covid-curfew-police-arrest-brussels/30978727.html
The Scotsman, Hungarian Protesters Seize Tank, 24 October 2006, https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/hungarian-protesters-seize-tank-2512100
CNN, Romania’s Constitutional Court Annuls Presidential Election Result, 6 December 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/europe/romania-annuls-presidential-election-intl/index.html
Al Jazeera, French Court Bars Far-Right Leader Le Pen from Public Office, 31 March 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/31/french-court-finds-far-right-leader-le-pen-guilty-of-embezzlement
Enyedi, Z. (2024). Illiberal conservatism, civilisationalist ethnocentrism, and paternalist populism in Orbán’s Hungary. Contemporary Politics, 30(4).
Pacciardi, A., Spandler, K., & Söderbaum, F. (2024). Beyond Exit: How Populist Governments Disengage from International Institutions. International Affairs, 100(5).
Wainer, G., Destradi, S., & Zürn, M. (2024). The Effects of Global Populism: Assessing the Populist Impact on International Affairs. International Affairs, 100(5).
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