When the new Hungarian parliament convenes and elects Péter Magyar as prime minister, it will mark not just an endpoint to a dark period in his country’s history but a point of light for anyone concerned about the global slide from democracy toward autocracy.
Sunday’s election produced the highest turnout since 1989, when Hungarian democracy was restored after decades of totalitarian rule. Many observers had come to believe that, under Viktor Orbán’s leadership, democratic institutions had been so thoroughly degraded that change had become effectively impossible. Thankfully they were wrong. Despite the near-destruction of a free press, the manipulation of electoral laws and the systematic packing of the judiciary, Orbán could not withstand the tide of public fury at his government’s economic mismanagement. A narrow result might have tempted those in power to challenge or undermine it. The scale of Magyar’s Tisza party victory made that impossible.
With Tisza holding more than two thirds of seats in the new parliament, some Orbán defenders have tried to argue that Hungary’s status as a redoubt of the right remains secure. They are grasping at straws. Hungary is indeed a conservative society, but Magyar swept to power on promises to dismantle the mechanisms of control, patronage and cronyism embedded in its constitutional order, and to pursue prosecutions of those who enriched themselves at the public’s expense. That will not be easy. But Tisza’s supermajority gives Magyar a latitude to unwind illiberal democracy that Poland’s Donald Tusk, hamstrung by a hostile president, has not enjoyed.
For the European Union, Orbán’s departure is the most welcome development in some years. Hungary had moved from being an occasional irritant to a direct threat to the functioning of the union itself. The immediate consequence of Sunday’s result should be the long-delayed confirmation of billions in aid for Ukraine. There will also be relief at the prospect of negotiating the next multi-annual budget without Orbán at the table.
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Magyar has already signalled his determination to unlock the EU funds frozen by Brussels as a penalty for Hungary’s repeated rule-of-law violations. Progress may be slower than optimists hope but European leaders should remain attentive to the political pressures on a new government that has inherited a fiscal crisis, a dysfunctional economy and collapsing public services.
The Orbán experiment was celebrated by strongmen from Moscow to Washington and by populist nationalists across Europe as a prototype for a new form of reactionary governance. Now that it has failed so comprehensively, we may hear considerably less about the Hungarian model in the years ahead. The people of Hungary would almost certainly welcome that outcome.
