Eurosceptics may come and go, but there’s only one Viktor Orban. It took 16 years and Sunday’s record turnout in Hungary to vote out the seemingly unbeatable far-right leader who once boasted of building an illiberal state. Why did the far-right idol of MAGA world finally fall out of favour? And not just by a nose: “The Hungarian people didn’t vote for a simple change of government, but for a complete change of regime,” boasts Prime Minister-in-waiting Peter Magyar. How will the once-ally-turned-pro-EU conservative turn his constitutional supermajority into a rolling back of Orban’s consolidation of power?
We ask about the task at hand and reactions abroad – starting with Russia, on which Hungary depends for its oil and gas. How to handle the Kremlin?
The sighs of relief in Brussels and Kyiv are audible, what with Budapest no longer championing a coalition of Eurosceptics that includes France‘s Marine Le Pen.
But it doesn’t mean Hungary will always be pliant, nor that hostility from bigger powers will magically disappear.
Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.
