The dismantling of Viktor Orban’s Hungary

Hungarians tuning in to M1 television’s news bulletin last week were greeted with a black screen – and an apology.“Public media should not lie,” the message read. “We are sorry for doing it so long.”For years under Hungary’s illiberal nationalist prime minister Viktor Orban, M1 acted as his mouthpiece, spewing out pro-government messages and trashing, or ignoring altogether, its critics and opponents. Other public outlets such as Kossuth Radio did the same.News programmes on M1 and Kossuth have now been taken off air pending an overhaul to restore editorial independence and trustworthiness. READ MOREThe move is just one of the sweeping changes under way in Hungary since Peter Magyar and his Tisza party defeated Orban in a landslide in April, promising to restore the rule of law and democratic integrity.A message on Hungary's state TV channel M1 on July 7th reads: 'The public state media cannot lie. We apologise for doing this for so many years! The public media is now transforming itself to be independent and credible in the future. News service is temporarily suspended! Stay tuned!' Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty The scale of the change is such that even staunch opponents of Orban’s authoritarianism question whether Magyar was moving too far too fast, while others detect a populist streak and fret about his ability to take unpopular decisions. Last week the government amended the constitution to remove the president, Tamas Sulyok, an Orban ally. It is strengthening anti-corruption bodies, reinforcing judicial independence, dismantling agencies and foundations controlled by the Fidesz party and removing Orban-era appointees from state energy companies, banks and regulators.The new administration is also turning around Hungary’s foreign policy by restoring co-operation with Brussels after years of obstructionism, mending relations with Ukraine and no longer doing Moscow’s bidding.It is a much more far-reaching regime change than many Hungarians thought possible. It is also an immense relief for the EU, which has struggled to stop its members from backsliding on democracy and the rule of law, and a blow to nationalist conservatives around the world who saw Orban’s long grip on power as an inspiration. Magyar’s government believes its “system change” could serve as a model for restoring good governance.Peter Magyar with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels in May after his election as Hungary's prime minister. Photographer: Wiktor Dabkowski/Bloomberg “I’m hoping Hungary can be a front-runner in renewing democracy in the western world, how democracy works and how we reach out to the people,” Anita Orbn, deputy prime minister, foreign minister and no relation to the ex-premier, said. Historian Krisztian Ungvary says he cannot think of another example in Hungary’s past of such fundamental change that was not determined by external forces.“What is happening now is a constitutional revolution: a nation, in order to restore the rule of law, is doing things that had previously seemed unimaginable,” Ungvary says. “The objective is the complete dismantling of the existing state structure. I would call that both a revolution and a regime change.”Control of a propaganda machine was a central part of the Orban “system” – one-party dominance of the economy, civil society and public sector coupled with notionally free elections that were in reality stacked in favour of the incumbent.“A historic day,” Magyar wrote on Facebook about the news shutdown. “Today marks the end of the propaganda broadcasts on public media platforms. They lied at night, they lied during the day, they lied on every wavelength. That is now over.”[ ‘A wake-up call for every country’: public service broadcasting in crisisOpens in new window ]When M1 resumed broadcasting later that evening, it was to show The Witness, a 1969 Hungarian classic about life under a corrupt and deceitful government in the 1950s. The satirical film was banned by Hungary’s communist regime for more than a decade. Pointedly, the film began on M1 at precisely 19.56 – the date of the Hungarian revolution, a popular uprising against the communist dictatorship that was crushed after a Soviet invasion.DeceitfulMagyar was once a member of Orban’s ruling party establishment but turned against it, likening it to the corrupt and deceitful communist elite of old.In barely two years, he built his centre-right Tisza party into a formidable grassroots opposition movement, lampooning government graft and propaganda at well-attended town square rallies in every corner of the country.Despite Orban’s total control of the media, lavish pre-election giveaways to pensioners, police and other traditional Fidesz party voters, and a gerrymandered electoral system, Magyar stormed to a crushing victory, propelled by public anger over falling living standards, failing public services and government corruption.Viktor Orban at a campaign rally on April 10th, two days before his landslide defeat in Hungary's parliamentary elections. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Few Hungarians believed after his 16 years in office, Orban would allow an opposition victory or give up power without a fight. But he immediately conceded defeat and the Fidesz “deep state” that many thought would thwart a new government is being dismantled without resistance.Fidesz, which commanded 135 out of 199 MPs in the last parliament, has shrunk to a mere 52. Orban and other party heavyweights declined to take up their seats.Unlike in nearby Poland, where efforts by Donald Tusk’s coalition government to repair the tattered rule of law quickly hit institutional gridlock, Hungary’s new administration has a more or less free hand to exercise reforms.Magyar secured a two-thirds supermajority in parliament allowing the Tisza government to change so-called cardinal laws, amend the constitution and appoint top officials.While Poland’s rightwing president has the ability to block key judicial reforms, Fidesz-captured institutions in Hungary lack the power to block the new government and the old party system has been wiped out.[ Hungary’s prime minister-elect accuses foreign minister of shredding confidential EU filesOpens in new window ]This is both positive and negative, says Daniel Hegedüs, deputy director of the Institute for European Policy in Berlin. It creates the conditions “for a genuine democratic reset”. On the other hand, “Magyar’s authority is subject to few meaningful constraints beyond public opinion, his own popularity and perhaps the European Union”.“This also means that the success of Hungary’s re-democratisation will ultimately depend on the willingness of Tisza and Peter Magyar to exercise political self-restraint.”For now, though, Magyar’s party remains wildly popular, with a stratospheric average approval rating of 69 per cent, and many Hungarians are clamouring for rapid change and justice for Orban and his circle. One of Magyar’s top priorities is addressing the corruption that became the lifeblood of the Orban system. Although much of it has in theory stopped now that Fidesz is out of power, the new prime minister is eager to expose how much money was stolen and to make sure that Hungary cannot become a kleptocracy again. Beefing up anti-graft safeguards was also a precondition set by the European Commission to unlock more than €16 billion in withheld EU funds over rule-of-law concerns under Orban. For Budapest, it has been a race against the clock because about €10 billion in post-pandemic recovery funds will expire in August.[ Hungary’s €10bn use-it-or-lose it EU challengeOpens in new window ]The new government has bolstered the Integrity Authority, an anti-graft agency, and is setting up a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office to seize ill-gotten gains. Hungary has also joined the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, allowing EU investigators to pursue cases of fraud and corruption involving EU money.Istvan Janos Toth, an economist at the Corruption Research Center Budapest, estimates the net value of EU-funded contracts awarded to 13 key Orban associates, plus those awarded without competition, totalled €19.3 billion between 2011 and 2023. Assuming 20 to 40 per cent of the value of the contract was skimmed off, “we estimate that EU taxpayers may have supported Orban’s kleptocracy with €3.2-€5.5 billion”, Toth wrote.That is just EU money. Ferenc Biro, head of the Integrity Authority, has estimated as much as €160 billion was siphoned off in the 16 years under Orban, including from international energy deals with Russia.An early opportunity to investigate top Orban officials, and potentially the ex-premier himself, involves the so-called golden convoy incident.Peter Magyar's government has been beefing up anti-graft safeguards which unlock more than €16 billion in withheld EU funds. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty On March 5th, just five weeks before Hungary went to the polls, counterterrorism police seized a shipment of cash and gold en route from Austria to Ukraine for suspected money laundering. In fact, the vans were on a routine operation to supply liquidity to a Ukrainian bank and the raid was allegedly a ruse intended to depict Ukraine as corruption-riddled and a threat to Hungary, one of Fidesz’s main election themes.In a key step in Magyar’s “system change”, prosecutors last month questioned as a suspect Janos Hajdu, a former Orban confidante and head of the counterterrorism police. Hajdu has already been dismissed from his post. According to a leaked prosecution document obtained by the news site 444.hu, Orban was one of several “individuals who made substantive decisions and issued instructions” over the raid.“The investigation should focus primarily on establishing their criminal liability (they cannot be questioned as witnesses), with the primary means of doing so being the testimony of those who acted on their instructions,” the document reads.Billboards from April's election feature Viktor Orban with the slogan, 'Come together against the war', alongside pictures of Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Peter Magyar. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Many Hungarians are demanding Orban, his top officials and his inner circle face justice for abuses of office. Orban has not commented on his involvement in the golden convoy case but described Hajdu’s dismissal as the beginnings of a “political purge”, describing the ex-official as a “role model for everyone who loves their country”.“Society wants blood,” says a former senior Fidesz figure. “But there is also danger in that. If they come after Orban aggressively, he will stand his ground and take up the martyr position. He will not run.”PurgeMagyar’s “purge” runs to the very pinnacle of the state.Tisza MPs last week passed a constitutional amendment to remove president Sulyok, arguing that he had failed to protect democracy and the rule of law.Sulyok, who was appointed by parliament in 2024, has refused to resign. He has also refused to sign the constitutional amendment into law and could refer it to the constitutional court. Magyar has threatened to have him impeached.The new parliament has already changed the constitution once, scrapping a Sovereignty Protection Office set up to police foreign funding for the media and civil society and Fidesz-controlled cultural and university foundations endowed with billions of euro of public money. It also limited the prime minister to two consecutive four-year terms, retrospectively so Orban is unable to return as premier.An amendment put forward earlier this month is more controversial. As well as ejecting Sulyok, it reintroduces a mandatory retirement age of 70 for constitutional court judges, thereby forcing out its 70-year-old head, also an Orban ally. It also imposes a three-term limit for MPs, in effect booting long-serving Fidesz politicians out of parliament in the future.Some human rights organisations have criticised the changes as an abuse of due process for removing officials, although not MPs, before the end of their mandates.The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, an NGO, says the dismissal of the president or senior judges can be justified if they are not performing their role as independent constitutional arbiters, but introducing term limits on MPs “raises the suspicion of a constitutional amendment for purely political motives”. It also says the process is rushed and excludes other necessary changes, such as the scrapping of discriminatory laws.Supporters of the former ruling party, Fidesz, protest over the Hungarian government's legislative changes aimed at ousting the country's president. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty The attempt to force out the president has prompted the first resistance efforts from Fidesz, with a protest by supporters earlier this month outside the presidential palace in Budapest. But only about 3,000 people took part. While Orban has attacked the latest changes – “Brick by brick, they are building autocracy,” he said, echoing one of Magyar’s own campaign slogans – he did not show up.Longer term, Magyar has promised an entirely new constitution, with a public consultation this year, followed by a referendum. But he says interim changes are “imperative” to enable that process and allow Hungary to work as a functioning constitutional democracy. In Hungary, however, constitutional processes have a habit of remaining incomplete. The country did not fully overhaul its communist-era fundamental law until 2011, 22 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and that was a partisan exercise pushed through parliament by Orban. “Temporary arrangements in Hungary have often proved more or less permanent,” says Csaba Toth, an independent analyst.“The logic behind Magyar’s constitutional amendments is shaped far more by the fight against corruption and concerns about effective governance than by issues relating to the rule of law or the protection of fundamental rights,” Toth adds.A protester at a pro-Fidesz rally holds a sign depicting Hungarian prime minister Peter Magyar and the slogan: 'A dictatorship must be suppressed in its infancy'. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty CorruptionSome senior business figures worry that Magyar is more at ease crusading against corruption and berating his predecessor than grappling with Hungary’s fiscal and economic problems. The public deficit stands at 8.3 per cent of GDP, according to the new government, more than double what Orban’s administration initially planned for this year.Several sources say the prime minister still appears to be in “campaign mode”.“It’s his DNA, he wants to remain popular. He is a populist through and through,” says one figure who knows him well. “But with a [high] approval rating, this is the time to make difficult decisions.”Magyar promised to unwind a close network of state institutions and select businesses that are typically run by Orban’s friends, but doing so could be fiendishly difficult and might unnerve financial markets if mishandled.“These are companies employing a lot of people, contributing a large part to the Hungarian economy,” warns one financier.Another intractable problem is Hungary’s reliance on Russian energy – it obtains about 90 per cent of its crude and 75 per cent of its gas from Russia. Foreign minister Orban says Hungary is pivoting back to a foreign policy that puts its national interest first but does so “within the European family”, while reducing its reliance on any other foreign power.She mocked the former government’s subservience to Moscow’s bidding, saying “the whole sovereignty thing crumbled in front of our eyes” when it emerged in a leaked transcript that Viktor Orban had referred to his country as the “little mouse” to Russia’s “lion”. But Budapest is bound by contracts for gas and nuclear power that could be hard to break. While the new government has a powerful mandate to implement its agenda – it campaigned on a 200-page manifesto of detailed reforms – there is uncertainty over how it will govern longer term. Magyar is still something of an unknown quantity and Tisza is a catch-all opposition movement, if notionally centre-right.“It is hard to know how much of this will stick,” says Zselyke Csaky of the Centre for European Reform in Budapest. “What’s the next stage?”In the short term, however, Magyar’s government is riding high on a wave of enthusiasm. “The landslide change is in the society and how they see things, the expectation, the optimism,” says Anita Orban, noting that Hungary is “traditionally a very pessimistic country”. She jokes: “People are saying even gravity is lighter since April 12th.”For Hungarians who felt burdened and oppressed by Orban’s 16 years in power, the election has brought an enormous sense of release, says Karoly Gerendai, founder and owner of the Sziget festival, one of Europe’s largest youth events.“There’s a feeling of regime change in the country. An interesting question is whether any government can live up to these expectations. “Until now the movement’s defining characteristic has been that it is anti-Fidesz. Once actual decisions have to be made, however, support could quickly erode because it will be impossible to satisfy everyone. Ideally, Hungary would become a normal country with a variety of political parties.”– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026