In Hungary, Peter Magyar, a former diplomat and ex-member of the ruling Fidesz party, won nearly 30% of the vote in the European elections after a campaign that lasted just a few weeks. An electoral score that now makes him Prime Minister Viktor Orban's main rival.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has registered its worst performance in an EU election since Hungary joined the bloc 20 years ago. Fidesz got 44.8% of the vote June 9 for the EU Parliament, more than any of its domestic rivals, but the election result was a sharp decline from the 52% support the party won in the 2019 EU vote.
The party’s electoral underperformance is mainly due to the meteoric rise of Peter Magyar, an ex-member of Fidesz who has become its fierce critic.
Magyar was virtually unknown four months ago, yet his party, Tisza (Respect and Freedom), won 29.6% of the vote.
“Today marks the end of an era,” Magyar said after the poll on Sunday. “This is the Waterloo of Orban’s factory of power, the beginning of the end,” he said, referring to Orban’s dominance of the political scene in Hungary.
Magyar, a 43-year-old former diplomat, who always appears in jeans, a white shirt and sneakers, also noted the record voter turnout, approaching 60%.
Eleven of Hungary’s 21 delegates to the EU parliament will come from Fidesz, as far-right non-attached members, while Tisza will send seven delegates to Brussels, where they will join the ranks of the conservative European People’s Party (EPP).
Former Fidesz insider
Just a few months ago, nothing would have suggested this electoral shake-up in Hungary, where Orban’s grip on power has lasted 14 years and where the opposition has trouble making itself heard.
Magyar, part of the country’s conservative elite, is an unlikely rival to Orban.
A former Fidesz disciple familiar with the upper echelons of power, he comes from a politically prominent family associated with the conservative party. His grandfather, a Supreme Court judge, hosted a popular TV show in the 1980s that dispensed practical advice to settle personal legal disputes.
Following in his grandfather’s footsteps, Magyar became a lawyer.
In 2006, under the Socialist government, the police brutally cracked down on anti-government protests. Magyar and his grandfather both defended the victims of police violence before the courts.
After serving for 10 years in Brussels as a diplomat, Magyar returned to Hungary in 2018 and became a member of the Orban government's inner circle.
Magyar’s career took a sharp change of direction in February, when Fidesz was hit by scandal.
An independent media outlet revealed that in 2023, a presidential pardon had been secretly granted to the deputy director of a children’s home convicted of covering up a case of child sex abuse. The affair provoked public outrage, leading to the resignation of the President of the Republic Katalin Novak and the withdrawal from politics of the former minister of justice Judit Varga.
In the wake of these resignations, Magyar – who was married to Varga until 2023 – decided to leave Fidesz. “I don’t want to be part of a system where the real culprits hide behind women’s skirts,” he announced in an interview with the Partizan YouTube channel, with 2.5 million views.
In the days that followed, he gave many interviews and revealed the behind-the-scenes workings of a party he described as “corrupt” and “authoritarian”.
Stefano Bottoni, a historian specializing in Hungary at the University of Florence, says that since Magyar “comes from the Orban system, he knows its mechanisms, strengths and weaknesses inside out. He knows where to strike”.
Neither left nor right
Magyar officially launched his political career at the end of February. On March 15 and April 6, tens of thousands of people came to hear his speeches in Budapest. On April 17, he announced plans to field candidates for the European elections on June 9.
After unveiling his party’s list of candidates for the EU parliament he began a whirlwind campaign, criss-crossing the country, holding rallies and meeting voters.
With his slogan “Neither left-wing nor right-wing, simply Hungarian!”, he ruled out any alliance with other political parties.
“He’s playing the ‘outsider’ candidate card, anti-system, in the centre, who rejects the right-left divide and is going to put order back into political life,” says Bottoni, drawing a parallel with French President Emmanuel Macron’s rhetoric in France, in 2017.
Making his pitch from the back of a flatbed truck, on a stage or in the middle of a village square, Magyar promised in each speech to “take back” the country “step by step” and “brick by brick”, and espoused both social conservatism and social welfare protection, often highlighting the fight against poverty.
“And it’s working: he’s succeeding in rallying a section of the left-wing electorate, the many people disillusioned with Hungarian politics who see in him a real alternative to Orban. And he’s even attracted disaffected Fidesz supporters – who are a rare breed,” Bottoni says.
“He plays on the contrasts between himself—young and sporty—and an aging Orban,” says Bottoni, “and he is seen by a whole section of the population” as a “catalyst” for change.
However, Bottoni says, “Peter Magyar remains a product of Fidesz. He’s not proposing to overthrow the system. He’s not left-wing. He has simply taken a more moderate stance – that of a new centre.”
The ‘peace’ candidate
Beyond his charisma and his “knowledge of the enemy”, Fidesz, Magyar has another advantage in European elections. “As a former diplomat, he knows the ins-and-outs of Brussels well,” Bottoni says.
“And against a backdrop of economic crisis and inflation, he was able to play on the promise of bringing European money back to Hungary, reconciling some citizens with Brussels.”
But this “pro-European” stance has given Orban’s government something upon which to focus its attacks.
Always highly critical of Brussels, Orban, who has remained close to Moscow, kept up accusations against the EU and NATO during the recent campaign. While he has tried to block European military aid to Kyiv, he accused Brussels and NATO of dragging member countries into a “global conflagration”.
“In recent weeks, he has repeatedly described Péter Magyar as a ‘servant of Brussels’, who would bring migrants and war to Hungary,” notes Bottoni.
However, as in domestic politics, “Peter Magyar’s stance on Europe is not fundamentally different from that of Fidesz. Nor is he a great defender of the idea of a European nation,” says Bottoni.
And the two parties also converge on the Ukrainian question, since Magyar has “repeatedly reiterated his refusal to deliver arms to Kyiv”, Bottoni says.
No turning back
In any case, the Orban camp’s counterattacks made little impact in the election. “After this result in the European elections, Peter Magyar has officially become the face of the opposition to Viktor Orban, and there’s no turning back now,” notes Bottoni.
The focus today is on the 2026 general elections.
“It’s a long marathon ahead. And what’s certain is that Viktor Orban is not the type to let himself be beaten easily,” Bottoni says.
This story has been translated from the original in French.
