A democratic Hungary: priorities and ambitions after Orbán

Hungarians celebrate the election results in Budapest on April 12th, 2026. Photo: Christian Unger / Shutterstock

Just as their country was becoming increasingly controversial and marginalized within the EU, Hungarians have unexpectedly written one of the most impressive pages in the annals of democracy in 21st century Europe.

When it looked like Viktor Orbán’s illiberal regime had managed to methodically reshape the Hungarian state and establish tight political control across the board, significant numbers of volunteers have contributed to positive change in a manner that has no precedent in national history. Citizens then turned out in record numbers for the opposition on April 12th. Rising dynamically since early 2024, the Tisza party eventually received close to 3.4 million votes in a country with only about twice as many eligible voters. Overcoming its massive inbuilt disadvantages and turning the logic of the electoral system introduced by Fidesz against the incumbent, the party led by Péter Magyar thereby not only soundly defeated Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz but acquired a supermajority that few dared hope could be within reach.

Tisza thus opened up the possibility of comprehensive change, of systematically undoing sixteen years of illiberal state building under Orbán, re-establishing democracy and the rule of law, and reorienting the foreign policy of Hungary. This stunning reversal of political fortunes is certainly cause for celebration – and a source of some badly-needed democratic hope in our darkening age. However, it would be a mistake to think of the resounding electoral victory over Orbán’s centralized, divisive, and corrupt rule as having already terminated his complex system of power.

This article examines some key priorities of the incoming Magyar government to address those problematic legacies, as well as some of the larger ambitions it needs to pursue to truly transform Hungary in the coming years. This needs to be done in order to succeed despite a deep socio-economic crisis, and notwithstanding the fact that Fidesz continues to be supported by substantial segments of society. In the first part of the article, I shall briefly explore questions of immediate political relevance, such as accountability, foreign policy, media and the public sphere, the electoral system, and the constitution. I will then address what I view as larger issues that Hungarian democracy must tackle if it is likely to flourish. The country must escape from the European periphery into a more integrated EU, launch a nuanced and principled global strategy, and develop a democratic system of education and culture.

A long to-do list

While the defining spirit of Hungarian politics has already been transformed, the task of radically reforming state institutions that have been gravely deformed over the past sixteen years still lies ahead. Tisza’s central, and broadly popular, campaign promise of rendszerváltás (literally: change of system) implies that the new governing party is intent on introducing comprehensive changes. It is an essential promise that Tisza – unlike Donald Tusk’s government in Poland – now has a broad enough mandate to realize.

However, pursuing such a goal will raise difficult dilemmas. Unless Orbán’s illiberal power bloc collapses under pressure like a pack of cards, implementing such comprehensive changes is likely to prove a fraught process. The evident corruption at the heart of the previous regime makes such an optimistic scenario of collapse at least plausible. We might indeed soon hear more and more damaging exposures that could speed up the disintegration of Fidesz’s quasi-party state.

Achieving a measure of accountability will in any case be necessary to re-establish a basic sense of justice after state capture. As long as Fidesz continues to control substantial resources and the party’s current electorate of more than two million people remains largely intact, launching high-profile trials will contain obvious risks. Holding Orbán personally responsible may seem unavoidable, for instance, but attempting to do so may just be too bold an ambition for now.

A useful starting point could be beginning with cases against major oligarchs who have enriched themselves through acquiring vast resources in more than questionable ways. The cases of notorious politicians such as the former Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, or the perhaps even more notorious Antal Rogán – who as Minister of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office orchestrated state propaganda campaigns while also controlling the secret services in recent years – might soon be considered as well.

The flipside of the dilemma regarding the former elite is who among those who have benefitted from the regime’s partisan lavishness in more mundane ways, and have served it rather uncritically throughout the years, may pursue a fresh start. It is also worth considering under what exact conditions this may happen. A conspicuous current trend exists in which various servants of the former regime are aiming to whitewash said regime and thereby declare their recent activities as essentially harmless – having conceded defeat on April 12th may even be abruptly taken as a sign that the Orbán regime was supposedly quite democratic. While there is a need to de-escalate the political polarization that has taken hold of the country, a naïve acceptance of such apologetic views and too smooth a transition of a kind that would be reminiscent of 1989 in the country might indeed hinder a more profound societal democratization.

If how to achieve a radical rupture without unnecessary convulsions can be called the central policy dilemma of the near future, the immediate goals of the new government will include a foreign policy reset in which, for reasons of basic credibility, developing an uncontroversial and basically decent approach towards the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine ought to have obvious priority. Perhaps most crucially, Magyar’s government will aim to re-establish good relations with the European Union, not least to urgently regain access to vast sums of badly needed funds.

Whereas the first move may contain some internal political risks but should be doable in the short term (even if Magyar’s government might still prove to be a tough negotiator when it comes to Ukraine’s future EU accession), the second raises some difficult dilemmas for Brussels. Should the Union be lenient and provide all possible support for a government it clearly wants to see succeed, or should it remain rather distrustful and base any concession on demonstrated improvements in the country?

Having let Hungarian citizens in favor of liberal democracy down in the recent past, the Union now ought to insist on basic standards in a much more effective manner. This would have to imply an ambitious democracy agenda. It must be clearly cognizant of local problems alongside ways to facilitate real improvements.

Re-establishing public media worthy of the name will be another early priority for Péter Magyar’s incoming government. This should be comparably easy, not least because numerous independent journalists have been doing an excellent job with limited resources while under tremendous pressure. To detoxify the public sphere more generally by battling disinformation and curbing various forms of hatred is likely to prove much less straight-forward. After all, Fidesz’s extended far rightist rule has been driven by animosity and lies, and leaves behind a plethora of dangerous sentiments and opinions.

An agenda item that should be high on the list – and that connects the aforementioned areas of foreign policy and media – concerns the development of a complex strategy to counter multifaceted Russian influence in the country. It is an agenda item that calls for resolute action behind the scenes that would finally redress a key omission made following Hungary’s experiences in 1989.

There are several other crucial matters that the incoming Magyar-led government might be well advised to address. Perhaps the most crucial one is the electoral law Fidesz introduced in the early 2010s that has helped produce supermajorities each time since. A more proportional system would be desirable, not least since it would enable a much clearer articulation of liberal, leftist, and green platforms than is currently the case. Such a proportional system would also increase the chances of maintaining an anti-Fidesz majority even if the broad Tisza bloc built to defeat Orbán’s quasi-party state starts to fragment.

Tisza’s supermajority also enables it to amend, or even replace wholesale, Fidesz’s rather unstable constitution. Unlike the introduction of a new electoral law, making such an ambition into a real success requires more than sound expertise and reasonable judgement; it would require prolonged, broadly based and substantial discussions. It might therefore have to be postponed to a more opportune moment – perhaps by a couple of years or so, by which time key state institutions would already have a track record of functioning much more adequately, Orbán’s power base would have been weakened, and the illiberal political culture of the previous regime would have become much less influential. Introducing a clear term limit for prime ministers, something Magyar has already promised he would do, could cancel the gravest danger. After all, it would make it impossible for Viktor Orbán to plot a return and try to systematically abuse his power again.

A more general principle that could guide Tisza’s future decisions in this regard might be formulated as follows: make creative use of constitutional majorities to limit executive power wisely – and thereby consciously disable the potential harms of the current supermajoritarian system that Fidesz so eagerly exploited after 2010. Concrete steps towards this goal would have to be considered in connection with the new electoral law. Since a more proportional system would be much less likely to yield constitutional majorities in the future, which elements of the political system should be judged essential enough so as to still require such majorities would need to be seriously debated at the very same time.

All that, of course, points to a paradox at the heart of the current moment: to have a chance to unmake Orbán’s illiberal state, Tisza had to be handed what is practically unlimited power. In other words, the mere possibility of re-democratization hinged on a lack of proper guarantees. It is precisely the lack of current guarantees that may now establish such guarantees.

However, if the Orbán regime leaves behind what is in many ways a toxic legacy, it also leaves behind a society that has become acutely aware of the damaging consequences the absence of such accountability can have. That in combination with a highly engaged citizenry ought to make us rather confident that the negative patterns of recent years shall not be repeated despite Tisza’s current supermajority.

Hungary and the world

The creation of a democratic Hungary involves three even larger and more ambitious agendas.

It has been widely remarked that Fidesz’s clientelism and low-quality economic strategy led to the mass emigration of many young and talented citizens. To truly succeed, the incoming government would thus need to address a vast challenge, hopefully in close cooperation with a growing number of European partners. Budapest would need to convince at least a substantial segment of such people to return, and others from across the EU and beyond to join them. This will mean that their skills and experiences directly benefit the country. Such an ambition cannot be separated from reflecting critically on the country’s position in the EU and how this has contributed to reproducing a peripheral socio-economic position in recent decades. Considerations must be made regarding what can be done differently for this issue to change in the future.

A central demand of a pro-European government after the obstructionism of Orbán could indeed be a much more integrated Union that redistributes far greater resources. Peripheral societies like that in Hungary should be major beneficiaries of such an expansion of integration, if only proper mechanisms of accountability were in place. It might be wise to frame such a political goal as opposing the self-serving Euroscepticism of the wealthy and proudly frugal member states such as, most notably, the Netherlands. A central campaign promise of Tisza has indeed been that Hungary would “return to Europe”, a promise that is perfectly understandable given Fidesz’s rejection of core European values and common positions, as well as the sheer weight of the “EU question” for the country’s future.

At the same time, Magyar’s government cannot avoid reconsidering the place and role of Hungary in the wider, more global scheme of things. Having a complex and ambitious global strategy will indeed be essential in our increasingly post-western world. In their admittedly often controversial ways, the Orbán regime’s key ideologues, such as Balázs Orbán or Márton Békés, have already launched an intriguing, if ultimately unsatisfying, debate about Hungary’s potential strategy in the new world disorder. While many of the details of their approach could be challenged, redefining the country’s relations to initiatives such as BRICS in which China plays a leading role is urgent. This should be done in ways that are principled, realistic, and beneficial. In short, Hungary’s new attempt to escape from the European periphery and develop sustainably ought to combine tight integration into a more ambitious and more democratic EU with a wider strategy that does not shy away from reconsidering mainstream western preferences and prescriptions with local and global realities in mind.

Taking an even broader view, the success of building democracy back better depends on the education of citizens to participate in public life in an informed and argumentative manner. It thus depends also on the employment of modern methods of pedagogy in sufficiently well-funded schools – something that Hungary currently falls far short of.

Such a democratic education of the future would draw substantially on political theory – something that is currently practically absent from Hungarian curricula – but should never be too abstract. It would ideally be based, among others, on thorough empirical investigations into the country’s recent past. This includes the country’s first extended experience with the benefits and shortcomings of liberal democracy starting in 1989-90, as well as the uncomfortable but potentially highly useful lessons to be drawn from analyzing the relative ease with which Fidesz centralized power after 2010.

The manner and scale of Tisza’s victory on April 12th were unexpected and stunning. It has made comprehensive institutional transformations possible and has thereby liberated the political imagination of Hungarians. This resounding victory over a quasi-party state feels like a heroic, almost miraculous achievement. It is the source of an infectious political euphoria at the moment. After many nasty and brutish years under Orbán, this sense of liberation amounts to a major resource that should be channelled in constructive directions. Having said that, the chances of future democratization ultimately depend on critical and realistic assessments of the country’s trajectory and political culture.

Ferenc Laczó is an assistant professor with tenure in European history at Maastricht University. He is the author or co-editor of thirteen books, including Magyarország globális története (A Global History of Hungary) in two volumes.

New Eastern Europe is reader-supported. If you value independent coverage of Central and Eastern Europe, please consider supporting our work.
👉 Click here to donate.

elections, Fidesz, Hungary, Péter Magyar, Tisza, Viktor Orban