The decisive outcome of Hungary's general election, in which Mr Victor Orban's centre-right Fidesz Hungarian Civic party has displaced Mr Gyula Horn's Socialists as the principal party in a new coalition, is a sharp reminder of the need to pay more close attention to that country's politics as it prepares to join the European Union. Mr Orban's victory may upset those preparations if he insists on implementing the programme on which he was elected.
It highlighted the austerity programme imposed by Mr Horn's government, notably its effects on the middle class, which flocked to support Mr Orban. He has promised moves to increase economic growth to seven per cent a year through cuts in taxes and welfare contributions. His likely coalition partners, the right-wing Smallholders party, will reinforce the case for looser fiscal policies and could lead to higher budget and current account deficits. In consequence, markets have fallen sharply; there are fears that the economic turnaround engineered by Mr Horn's government could be reversed and his success in converging Hungarian policies towards other European ones jeopardised.
But this is democracy, Hungarians who voted for the new dispensation argue. They clearly opted for a change and have given dramatic endorsement to Mr Orban's untried party as the voice of a new generation. It has increased its share of the vote from seven per cent in 1994 to 28.2 per cent in this election, taking supporters from other right-wing and liberal groupings. Mr Orban's record as a student opponent of the old regime, who called for the removal of Soviet troops from Hungarian soil in 1989, was consolidated over the last four years. Following his victory Mr Orban ruled out co-operating with the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats with which his party was previously associated; he also rejected the idea of a grand coalition with the Socialists, most of them ex-communists.
There is also a rather more strident assertion of nationalist feeling coming through his campaign rhetoric, as when he said on Sunday evening that the boundaries of the Hungarian state and nation do not coincide. This is a reference to the sizeable Hungarian minorities in neighbouring Slovakia and Romania. One of the most notable achievements of Mr Horn's government was to have reached a sophisticated agreement with Romania on how to handle issues of minority rights. It impressed European Union negotiators, who saw it as evidence that in extending invitations to both states for accession talks they would not be importing unresolved border questions into the Union.
It remains to be seen how this untried coalition will proceed on these core economic and foreign policy issues. They will come up against the constraints imposed on all national governments by the wider policy harmonisation that is part and parcel of contemporary regional interdependence in a Europe preparing for closer integration. Too determined an effort to force the pace of economic growth would upset the fiscal and low inflation stability achieved by Mr Horn. Too assertive an insistence on the rights of Hungarian minorities would upset relations with the country's neighbours. Mr Orban will rapidly confront the truth that to govern is to choose, as well as to implement election programmes.