’Ready to govern’ Hungary: Former ally Magyar challenges Orban with Europe gun

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Who is Peter Magyar?

Forty-four-year-old Peter Magyar burst onto Hungary’s political scene in February, 2024, after having broken ranks with Orban’s Fidesz party over a child sex abuse pardon scandal that led to the resignation of his ex-wife, then justice minister Judit Varga, and then president Katalin Novak.

Magyar, who up until then had been part of Orban’s inner circle, accused the government of walking free from responsibility after letting Varga and Novak take the blame. “I don’t want to be part of a system where the real culprits hide behind women’s skirts,” he said. Shortly afterward he launched his own centre-right party, Tisza (Respect and Freedom), and vowed to crack down on corruption and bring Hungary closer to Europe.

“Step by step, brick by brick, we are taking back our homeland and building a new country, a sovereign, modern, European Hungary,” Magyar said shortly after founding his party.

Just a few months later, Tisza stunned Hungary’s political establishment by securing almost 30 percent of the votes in the European parliamentary elections – cementing Magyar’s role as Orban’s most serious challenger yet.

As both contenders launched their campaigns over the weekend, Magyar’s Tisza already held a comfortable 10-point lead over Orban’s Fidesz – and has done so over the past year, according to a combined poll by Politico.

“Tisza stands ready to govern,” Magyar said at his launch event.

Why is Orban’s rule in danger?

Aside from the Fidesz “family values” brand taking a serious hit with the 2024 pardon scandal – prompting some of the party’s conservative members to defect to Tisza – Orban has been unable to to get Hungary’s bleeding economy back on track. In 2023, a presidential pardon had been secretly granted to the deputy director of a children’s home convicted of covering up a case of child sex abuse.

In the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine – which pushed the country’s energy prices to the skies – Orban also introduced new income rebates, which in 2023 resulted in the worst inflationary surge in Europe, at a staggering 25 percent.

Although the worst of the financial crisis has since subsided, a Eurobarometer survey cited by Reuters last autumn showed that rising prices, inflation and cost of living still top Hungarians’ main concerns.

The state of the country’s economy has also been weighed down by the fact that the European Union has blocked some €20 billion in funds over corruption and the rule of law concerns.

The economy is in other words a sore point for Orban, and Magyar has taken every opoortunity to point that out.

Europe in focus

The real battleground in the April ballot will be the two candidates' opposing views on the EU.

While Orban last week declared that the real danger to Hungary is the EU, Magyar has gone the other way: “Hungary will once again be a full-fledged member of the European Union,” he told a Budapest rally last year, touting the EU as the answer to Hungary’s prayers, especially if it releases the withheld EU funds.

On Saturday, Orban told supporters that “Brussels … [is] a source of imminent danger”, adding that the April ballot is therefore a choice between “war and peace”, and that Fidesz, with its anti-EU stance, therefore is the only “safe choice”.

Orban's anti-establishment and nationalist views has won him support from US President Donald Trump, and on Monday US Secretary of State Marco Rubio paid him a symbolic visit, telling him "your success is our success".

Orban hopes his ties with Trump wil help him collect the votes needed to prolong his reign.

If he wins the elections, he has promised to "clear away" the "oppressive machinery of Brussels" in his country.

Views on Russia and Ukraine

Under Orban, Hungary has remained Russia’s closest EU ally throughout the war, routinely blocking any European sanction packages against what has remained – despite pleas from Europe – its main gas supplier.

He has equally tried to stonewall any military or financial aid to Ukraine. And at the end of last year, he even went as far as to say it was “unclear who attacked whom”.

Although Magyar has described Moscow as “the aggressor” in the conflict, and last year told the Financial Times he would push for an immediate ceasefire along with Hungary’s EU allies if he comes to power, he has also said he would not reverse Hungary’s current policy of non-support for Kyiv nor totally sever Budapest’s ties with Russia. He staunchly opposes fast-track EU accession for Ukraine.

"On Ukraine, Tisza’s manifesto is notably thin," an analyst note from the Brussels-based think-tank European Policy Center warned, adding that "EU leaders should not assume that a Magyar government would mark a clean break with Orban-era policies."

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