Orban ousted: What Magyar’s victory means for Hungary and the EU | EUROtoday

The photographs from Budapest stated all of it. Tens of hundreds of Hungarians, many in tears, waving flags alongside the Danube as Peter Hungarian declared: “We have freed Hungary.” After 16 years, Viktor Orban, the person who turned his nation right into a template for European “illiberalism”, had been swept from energy.

With 53.56 p.c of the vote and 138 seats out of 199 in parliament, Magyar’s Tisza get together secured a two-thirds supermajority, the identical constitutional lever Orban as soon as used to dismantle checks and balances. Magyar has promised to make use of it to rebuild them.

For the European Union, Sunday’s outcome was greeted with undisguised aid. “Hungary has chosen Europe,” stated European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on X. But the jubilation in Brussels will likely be getting forward of the fact on the bottom.

“One can be cautiously positive,” Ian Bond, director of the Centre for European Reform in London, informed FRANCE 24. “But not everything is going to change.”

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Magyar is a conservative, a former Fidesz insider who broke with Orban in 2024. His Tisza get together attracts a strikingly combined crowd: 43 p.c of his voters determine as liberal, 22 p.c as left-wing, 10 p.c as Green, and solely 11 p.c as right-wing conservative. Keeping that coalition collectively whereas delivering on sweeping institutional reform will likely be a balancing act of its personal.

“His first priority is rule of law, and that will keep him very busy,” says Denis Cenusa, an affiliate knowledgeable on the Geopolitical Security Studies Centre in Vilnius. “Because it will depend entirely on his ability to revive the Hungarian economy, including by regaining access to EU structural funds.”

The corruption mountain

The financial system was among the many prime priorities that drove Hungarians to the polls in report numbers, with a historic turnout of 79.5 p.cthe very best for the reason that nation adopted democracy on the finish of the Cold War.

Prices in Hungary have surged by 57 p.c since 2020, the very best enhance within the EU, and practically double the bloc’s common of 28 p.c. The common month-to-month wage stands at €1,037, in contrast with a €2,654 common within the euro space.

Behind these numbers lies a deeper malaise. Hungary ranked final within the EU on Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Indexscoring simply 40 out of 100, its worst outcome ever. Its rating has dropped 15 factors since 2012, essentially the most vital decline of any EU member state.

Magyar’s first introduced transfer after his victory was clear and pointed: Hungary would be part of the European Public Prosecutor’s Officethe EU’s highly effective anti-fraud and anti-corruption physique.

It is a promise that resonates, however one that can collide head-on with the institutional structure Orban spent 16 years setting up. The judiciary, the media, the electoral system and the general public procurement networks have been reshaped in Fidesz’s picture.

Read extraHow Orban advantages from Hungary’s tailored election system

Polish warning

Europe has been right here earlier than. When Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition ousted Poland’s PiS authorities in late 2023Brussels additionally celebrated. The lesson, in line with Tania Rancho, a researcher in EU elementary rights regulation at Paris-Saclay University, is to handle expectations.

“Tusk didn’t overturn everything. Not on immigration, not on women’s rights,” she says. “The Polish precedent shows that a pro-European replacement doesn’t automatically mean a progressive one.”

The parallel is instructive. Magyar, like Tusk, is pro-EU and anti-corruption. But on the politically charged questions that outlined the Orban period, his positions stay largely unknown or intentionally imprecise.

On LGBTQ rights, as an illustration, Magyar stated virtually nothing through the marketing campaign. The EU is presently awaiting a landmark ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on Hungary’s 2021 anti-LGBTQ regulationa bit of laws that, within the phrases of the Court’s Advocate General, “establishes systematic discrimination” towards LGBTQ individuals. In May 2025twenty EU member states had already denounced the regulation as a violation of elementary freedoms. What Magyar will do if and when the CJEU strikes it down stays to be seen.

Watch extra‘Change is feasible’ in Hungary after Magyar victory: FT reporter Marton Dunai

On migration, arguably Orban’s most resonant wedge situation, the image is equally advanced. Magyar has nationalist instincts on the subject, says researcher Denis Cenusa, “but he won’t make a political brand out of it. That means he’ll be more likely to find common ground with Brussels,” as it is moving in a harder direction.

Orban’s Hungary was a grotesque extreme of that tendency, deporting asylum seekers at the border while quietly issuing work visas to Asian migrants in the name of economic need. But the underlying logic of “chosen” versus “imposed” migration is one that resonates well beyond Budapest.

Geopolitical ripple effects

For the rest of the EU, Sunday’s result removes a persistent irritant from the bloc’s decision-making machinery. Orban had used his veto power to block or delay EU aid to Ukraine, sanctions against Russia, and the accession process for Kyiv.

But Bond, the former senior diplomat, urges caution on Ukraine in particular. Magyar, he notes, “nonetheless has reservations”, as he has opposed sending weapons to Kyiv and remains sceptical of Ukrainian EU membership. “I do not imagine in an in a single day conversion,” Bond says flatly. Magyar reiterated that stance on Monday, saying: “We are speaking a few nation at warfare. It is totally out of the query for the European Union to confess a rustic at warfare.”

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Cenusa is equally measured on the wider geopolitical significance. “The Orban issue on EU integration was barely exaggerated,” he says. “He was creating issues, however he was not the one one. With or with out him, EU integration will proceed.”

What does change, he argues, is the symbolic register. The defeat is “a blow to European illiberalism” but it may also, paradoxically, be “an incentive for far-right forces to study from Orban’s errors.”