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Orbán achieves victory despite party’s worst historical performance in EU race

The day after Hungarians voted in the European Parliament elections, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government declared a major victory, but missing from the victory speeches was recognition that it was his party’s worst performance in an election in the European Parliament. EU since Hungary joined the bloc 20 years ago.

The lackluster result can largely be attributed to the emergence of a new political force in Hungary: Péter Magyar, a former member of Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition, who broke with the party and declared his intention to build a popular movement to defeat Orbán and sweep away Orbán. eliminate the autocratic system from it.

Eleven of Hungary’s 21 delegates to the EU legislature will come from Fidesz, more than any of its national competitors. After counting 44% of Sunday’s vote, the government said the result clearly indicates overwhelming support for Orbán’s far-right nationalism.

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“Never before have so many people, 2.015 million, voted for Fidesz-KDNP in an EP election,” spokesperson Zoltán Kovács wrote on social media platform X on Monday. “The message is clear: Hungarians say no to war , to migration and to gender ideology.”

However, Fidesz has never performed so poorly in an EU election since it joined in 2004. Votes for the party fell sharply from its 52% support in 2019 polls, and it lost two of its seats. in the European Parliament.

András Bíró-Nagy, an analyst and director of the Budapest-based think tank Policy Solutions, said the power of Orbán, who returned to power in 2010, has never been so at risk.

“We are in uncharted territory because before it was not imaginable that a single political party could seriously challenge Viktor Orbán,” Bíró-Nagy said.

FILE – Viktor Orbán waves after his annual State of the Nation address at the Varkert Bazaar conference hall in Budapest, Hungary, on February 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Anna Szilagyi, File)

The new Magyar party, Respect and Freedom (TISZA), won almost 30% of the vote on Sunday, winning seven delegates in the EU legislature. He has said the election would propel his movement into a stronger position to challenge and defeat Orbán in the next national election, scheduled for 2026.

On Sunday night, thousands of Magyar supporters gathered along the Danube River to await the election results. Addressing the jubilant crowd, Magyar said his party’s performance was a “political smash” that would usher in a new era of “helpful, fair and, above all, honest” governance.

“Today marks the end of an era,” Magyar said. “This is the Waterloo of Orbán’s power factory, the beginning of the end,” he said, referring to the battle that ended the Napoleonic Wars.

Magyar campaigned less on a specific party program than on a structural critique of Orbán’s system, which he characterized as rife with corruption, nepotism, intimidation and propaganda.

He mocked the state of Hungary’s education and health systems, accused Fidesz of creating a class of oligarchs enriched by lucrative public contracts and promised to form a more constructive relationship with the EU.

Hungary’s traditional opposition parties, due to pressure from the Orbán government and their own conflict and infighting, have been unable to pose a serious challenge to Fidesz over the past 14 years.

“The Péter Magyar phenomenon is the symptom of a deep crisis in Hungarian politics,” said Bíró-Nagy. “This reflects not only some disillusionment with the Orbán regime, but shows complete disillusionment with the established opposition.”

“Many people in Hungary long for something new, long for change, and are willing to support basically anyone who potentially shows some force against the Orbán regime,” he said.

Magyar’s rise came after a series of scandals that rocked Orbán’s government and led to the resignation of the president and the justice minister. A deep economic crisis, compounded by higher inflation in the 27-member EU, also caused a drop in the popularity of the bloc’s longest-serving leader.

Meanwhile, the EU has frozen more than €20 billion ($21.5 billion) to Hungary for its violations of rule of law and democracy, and Orbán’s friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin have alienated him. even more from its EU and NATO Allies.

Before the election, the five-time prime minister campaigned on an anti-EU platform and presented the vote as a contest that would decide whether Russia’s war in Ukraine would engulf Europe.

It drew heavily on culturally divisive issues, such as migration, LGBTQ+ rights, and fears that the war could escalate to directly involve Hungary if its political opponents were successful.

But Fidesz’s weakened position suggests that Orbán’s hopes that EU elections would consolidate eurosceptic parties and give him a bigger role in Europe’s far-right have probably been dashed.

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“Orbán has already taken the place of the radical right in Hungarian politics,” Bíró-Nagy said. “But the breakthrough that Viktor Orbán expected did not materialize at the European level.”


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