On June 9th there will be two elections held in Hungary: the European Parliament (EP) elections and local elections. However, neither are expected to weaken Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s powerful grip on the country’s politics. Hungary’s opposition is in poor shape, and deeply divided. There is little doubt that the upcoming EP elections will be won by Fidesz, by a huge margin. But what will this mean for the European Union (EU) and politics in Brussels?
Hungary’s social and political dynamics since 2019
Cost of living crisis
Between 2019 and 2024, Hungary faced a significant cost of living crisis driven by high inflation, peaking at 14.5 percent in 2022. The Hungarian government implemented several measures to alleviate the impact on its citizens, including price controls on essential goods like fuel and basic food items, subsidies for energy bills, and tax cuts to increase disposable income. These efforts aimed to ease financial burdens and stabilise the market, offering immediate relief to households. Additionally, the government provided financial aid to businesses, reduced business taxes, and adjusted monetary policies to manage inflation and support economic recovery. By 2023, these measures helped reduce the inflation rate to an average of 1.76 percent annually, as energy prices normalised, the forint strengthened, and consumer demand adjusted. Voters benefited from these interventions as they helped curb living costs and protect jobs, ensuring a degree of economic stability amid global uncertainties.
An illiberal leader
The EU faces a particular challenge with Hungary, where press freedom, separation of powers, and other basic tenets of democratic liberalism have been weakened by the powerful Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his dominant political party Fidesz. Orbán was re-elected for the fourth consecutive time, continuing to rule the country with a high degree of illiberalism. Press freedoms have been rolled back, judicial independence has been weakened, and there has been significant democratic backsliding as his powerful party undermined key institutions of multi-party democracy.
Tension between Orbán and the EU has been high for many years, with Orbán criticising the EU and portraying it as a threat to Hungary, while also accepting huge amounts of EU funding and directing it towards his political allies. Yet, after more than 13 years in power, Orbán is looking strong, in large part thanks to the unfair political playing field his party has created since coming to power.
New challengers to Orbán
New political figures have emerged in recent time, notably Péter Márki-Zay and Péter Magyar. Márki-Zay, often referred to by his initials MZP, gained recognition as a political outsider when he was elected as the prime ministerial candidate of the joint opposition coalition in Hungary. Despite being a nonpartisan mayor of a small town, Márki-Zay won the first-ever primary elections in Hungary against high-profile candidates like the mayor of Budapest and the vice-president of the EP. He challenged Orbán in the 2022 parliamentary election to which he lost quite remarkably. A father of seven and a practising Catholic, Márki-Zay represented a broad alliance of right-wing, left-wing, liberal, and green parties, forced into unity by Fidesz’s electoral law.
Péter Magyar, another rising political star, has soared in popularity as a prominent challenger to Prime Minister Orbán more recently. His appeal stems from his strong anti-corruption stance and promises to improve living standards, which many feel have declined due to Fidesz policies and corruption. A former insider within Fidesz, Magyar joined the Tisza – Respect and Freedom party to run in the EP elections, quickly boosting the party’s support. In order to run in the EP elections, Magyar had to find a party, and quickly.
Magyar is now first on the party list for Tisza, a relatively new (founded in 2021) and small party, although it is experiencing massive increases in support since Magyar joined. Tisza is a third way, big tent, anti-corruption party whose main goal is to weaken Orbán’s hold over the country and restore normal democratic functions in Hungary. His background within Fidesz lends him credibility among former supporters, and his focus on rural areas distinguishes him from other opposition movements concentrated in Budapest. Although his support base is smaller than Fidesz, Magyar’s potential EP election could strengthen the opposition for the 2026 parliamentary elections.
Divergent foreign policy
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, tension between Hungary and the EU have escalated due to Orbán’s close ties with Moscow. While he condemned Russian aggression, Orbán has also questioned EU sanctions against Russia and blocked 50 billion euros in EU aid for Ukraine late last year.
More recently, Orbán has stated support for China’s 12-point peace plan for the conflict in Ukraine, which has faced a high degree of opposition from other EU leaders based on the fact that it does not include a demand for Russian forces to withdraw from Ukrainian territory.
Hungarian election dynamics since 2019
2019 EP elections
The 2019 EP election was dominated by Fidesz, continuing their trend from the previous elections in 2014 and 2009, where they secured over 50 percent of the vote each time. In 2019, Fidesz garnered 52.6 percent support, winning 13 of Hungary’s 21 EP seats. These elections marked a significant shift in Hungarian politics, with the centre-left, social-democratic Democratic Coalition (S&D) emerging as the leading opposition party with 16 percent of the vote. The liberal Momentum Movement (RE) followed with just under 10 percent support, displacing the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), which received 6.6 percent of the vote and one EP seat. The radical-right party, Jobbik, also secured one seat with 6.3 percent support.
This election underscored the changing political landscape, where MSZP and Jobbik were replaced by Democratic Coalition and Momentum Movement as the main opposition forces. The LMP (Politics Can Be Different) party was effectively wiped off the political sphere. The results were also scrutinised for their potential impact on the 2019 local elections. András Bódis of Válasz Online noted the possibility that in some municipalities, joint opposition candidates could defeat Fidesz-KDNP candidates, indicating a potential shift in local political dynamics.
2022 parliamentary elections
Since the last European elections, Hungary held parliamentary elections in 2022. Fidesz dominated these elections, finishing with 52.5 percent support and 135 of 199 seats in the national parliament. Fidesz’s overwhelming victory was influenced by several key factors: control over the domestic media landscape, voters’ desire for stability amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, and internal conflicts with the main opposition coalition. United for Hungary faced strong ideological differences and internal conflicts, hindering their ability to present a united front. Péter Márki-Zay, the opposition’s candidate, was perceived as inexperienced by many voters, contributing to the coalition’s struggles. The united front managed to gain 36.9 percent of the vote and 57 seats in the Hungarian parliament, a far worse outlook than what was originally expected.
Some analysts noted that a significant number of Jobbik voters shifted their support to Fidesz or Mi Hazánk instead of the united opposition. Márki-Zay himself acknowledged this issue, admitting that the united opposition might have lost up to “two thirds” of Jobbik voters. This fragmentation within the opposition was further highlighted by the lack of consensus among opposition leaders on the reasons for their defeat.
Ferenc Gyurcsány, leader of the Democratic Coalition (DK), and Péter Jakab, leader of Jobbik, blamed Márki-Zay for the loss. In contrast, Bernadett Szél and Ákos Hadházy refrained from assigning blame directly to him. Péter Ungár pointed out that nominating the conservative Márki-Zay as the candidate for a centre-left alliance was a “strategic mistake.” He also noted that the united opposition’s “elitist” rhetoric may have alienated rural voters, even in traditionally left-leaning constituencies.
Also competing in the 2022 election was Our Homeland Movement (MHM), a far right Hungarian nationalist party founded by the former Vice-President of Jobbik, another far-right party which joined the big tent opposition in the 2022 election. MHM received 5.7 percent support and now holds six seats in parliament.
What to expect
As of mid-May, Fidesz is likely to maintain support at or above 50 percent in the upcoming EP election. Tisza is polling between 20 and 25 percent, with support for MSZP hovering around 17 percent. The liberal Momentum currently sits around four percent. The party enjoyed high support earlier in the year but their numbers have dipped since the rise of Magyar and TISZA. Similarly placed, with around five percent, is Our Homeland Movement. The Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog party, a political satire party, is polling around five percent as well.
With Fidesz’s successful results all but guaranteed, how the party chooses to align itself on the EU level will have a significant impact on the future of EU politics. The party once belonged to the EPP, but has not belonged to an EU political group since 2021. Now the question is whether Fidesz will align itself with a different EU political group, such as ECR or ID. The two most prominent ECR parties, Brothers of Italy and Law and Justice in Poland, maintain strong ties with Fidesz.
However, Orbán’s alignment with China and close ties with Moscow diverges from the stance taken by many ECR parties, which have broadly supported Ukraine. Many ID parties, on the other hand, are more aligned with the Fidesz position on Ukraine. If Fidesz joins one of these right-wing groups, it will bring more than 10 EP seats to the alliance and will influence power structures in the EP in the coming years.
