Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban scored a crushing election victory to clinch a fourth consecutive term, overcoming criticism about democratic backsliding, his lukewarm support for war-ravaged Ukraine and close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Orban’s Fidesz party was on track to maintain its two-thirds parliament majority in a general election on Sunday, with more than four-fifths of the votes counted. That defied polls that had predicted a close race after opposition parties united to try to oust him as the European Union’s longest-serving leader.
Since 2010, the Hungarian leader has challenged the EU’s democratic foundations by consolidating of power in what he’s called an “illiberal democracy,” raising questions about his allegiance to Western values. His clear victory exposed the difficulty the bloc has had in dealing with member states who defy its rule-of-law standards and veer from their peers on key geopolitical issues such as Ukraine.
“We scored such a huge victory that it was visible even from the moon, but certainly from Brussels,” Orban told cheering supporters in Budapest after the vote. His pro-Russian ally in EU-aspirant Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, was on track to win a second term in a presidential election held the same day as Hungary’s ballot.
Until recently, a new term would have been a defining moment for the 58-year-old Orban. But after forging closer ties with Putin while needling his EU counterparts over everything from controlling courts to LGBTQ rights, Orban risks deeper isolation as Europe confronts Moscow.
The war in Hungary’s eastern neighbor upended the election campaign, forcing Orban to walk a political tightrope. He tried to distance himself from Putin by condemning Russia’s actions and backing EU sanctions against his regime. At the same time, Orban limited support for Ukraine, refusing to let weapons shipments cross Hungary and rejecting a ban of Russian oil and gas imports.
His message — heavily supported by pro-Orban media outlets that he has transformed into the EU’s biggest propaganda machine — was that joining a rush by fellow EU and NATO members to aid Ukraine with weapons would drag Hungary into the war. That resonated with voters against an opposition campaign suggesting that Orban is Putin’s pawn and the ballot a choice between East and West.
The campaign showed off Orban’s political instincts that have helped him become the dominant politician of his generation. He morphed from a liberal anti-communist student leader in the 1980s to a center-right conservative before landing on the nationalist fringes of European politics. But his ability to defeat opponents also masked bigger problems.
Record pre-election spending coupled with the fallout from the war in Ukraine, which prompted the government to cut the economic growth outlook, will require Orban to almost immediately address budget concerns. Phasing out price caps on basic food items and especially fuel, imposed in the run-up to the vote, will test his enduring popularity. Household energy subsidies, in place since 2013 and a reliable vote-getter, may also have to go.
The political challenges could be equally daunting. While the cost of financing Hungarian debt has soared as the central bank hiked interest rates to the highest in the EU, Hungary’s access to billions of euros of crucial EU funding has been delayed due to concerns over corruption in Hungary.
Since Orban returned to power in 2010, Hungary has fallen down Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index rankings to rank only above Bulgaria among the 27 EU states. Freedom House, meanwhile, has downgraded Hungary from a full-fledged democracy to a “hybrid regime.”
Orban’s political narrative — centering on the decline of the West and the rise of authoritarian regimes — is a harder sell even in Hungary after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which has killed thousands of civilians and driven 4 million to flee abroad. About half a million arrived in Hungary. In one of the starkest U-turns, the anti-immigration Orban welcomed them and even posted pictures of himself hugging Ukrainians.
He will also need to navigate a new EU mechanism that links funding to adherence to rule of law. It was approved in 2020 after the Hungarian premier outmaneuvered the bloc’s concerns about the rollback of democratic norms for the better part of the decade. Should it be activated this year, it threatens to deprive Hungary of as much as $40 billion.
Unlike before, Orban may no longer may be able to count even on his closest EU allies. His most outspoken critics, in fact, have been Hungary’s regional peers, including Poland, whose president warned Orban that his policy toward Ukraine would end up being “very costly” for him.
Orban will need to muster all of his political experience to prevent Sunday’s election win from turning into a Pyrrhic victory.
