Hungary beware: authoritarianism can be checked, but it is rarely dismissed with a single blow | Blanche Leridon

4 hours ago 9

“Historic” is an adjective used too often these days, at the risk of trivialising the word and diluting its substance. But Sunday’s Hungarian election, which marked the fall of Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power, deserves the label. The chief architect of European illiberalism, the man who dismantled Hungary’s rule of law, presided over a system of endemic corruption and stood as an avowed enemy of Ukraine is gone.

The scale of the moment is undeniable. For Ukraine and for the European project, the relief is palpable. With an election turnout of 79.5% – the highest the country has seen since the fall of the USSR – and a strong mobilisation of the youth vote, the Hungarian people have delivered a clear mandate for change. Despite the explicit support of Donald Trump and the Maga-sphere, despite an electoral map gerrymandered in his favour and a locked-down media landscape, Orbán lost. What is more, he lost so decisively that he was forced to concede immediately. There is, without a doubt, reason for enthusiasts of liberal democracy to celebrate – a “Budapest spring” in its own right.

However, we must be wary of the baggage this “historic” label carries. We should not expect too much, too soon. We are dealing with “long history” here – one election cannot bring about an instant return to liberal democracy. Experience across Europe shows that these national-populist episodes are not mere parentheses; they leave deep scars that take years to heal.

Poland’s example shows this process will take time. When Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition defeated the Law and Justice (PiS) party in 2023, there was a similar euphoria. Yet more than two years later, the rule of law in Poland is still not fully restored and PiS remains a potent force: it is the largest parliamentary group by number of seats and the Polish president, Karol Nawrocki, is backed by the party. This “Polish paradox” stems from the inherent tension of attempting to dismantle an illiberal system while respecting the very democratic principles one is seeking to restore. As we discovered in our recent research for Institut Montaigne, the Tusk government faced a dilemma: how could it correct the judicial appointments and decisions of the past decade without undermining legal certainty or violating procedural safeguards?

In Hungary, the task facing Péter Magyar will be even more daunting. Poland’s national-populist experiment lasted “only” eight years; Orbán was in office for 16. Furthermore, while PiS lacked the two-thirds majority needed to fully rewrite the Polish constitution, Orbán successfully enshrined his illiberalism into the foundations of the Hungarian state. Magyar inherits a “captured” state in which loyalists remain entrenched in every public structure, while key sectors of the economy and society – from the media to privatised universities – remain under the control of a pro-Orbán oligarchy.

Magyar is a conservative and former Fidesz insider who has pledged to tackle corruption and restore ties with Europe. He ran a good campaign, crisscrossing the country while maintaining a strong and effective presence on social media. But he inherits a country in a critical condition: since 2020, inflation in Hungary has exceeded 50%, while the country ranks 55th on the Economist’s Democracy Index (between Thailand and Sri Lanka), such that the country would be unable to join the EU if it were applying to do so today.

There was something both inevitable and incomplete about Orbán’s defeat. It was inevitable, given the wear and tear of long-term power and the failure to deliver on his own core promises of national grandeur and natalist policy. But his defeat also remains incomplete, because it takes infinitely more time and energy to rebuild than it does to dismantle. The legal vulnerabilities we have seen in Poland – where the levers of power remain beyond the executive’s reach due to a hostile presidency or a contested constitutional tribunal – will be mirrored, and likely amplified, in Hungary. Questions remain about how far Magyar, who now holds the two-thirds majority necessary to amend the constitution, will go in dismantling the system and whether the EU will maintain its pressure to ensure a genuine return to the rule of law.

This difficulty is compounded by what we might call the Trump factor. Just as Donald Trump has shown that a populist movement can survive and even thrive after losing power, Orbán’s brand of politics is now deeply rooted in Hungary. Orbán is only 62, and with his American ally providing a blueprint for the comeback narrative, he will probably wait for the new coalition to struggle with the realities of a broken economy. He will be betting on the frustration of voters when the historic change they voted for fails to produce an instant miracle. As Orbán said on Sunday evening after conceding defeat: “We never give up. This is one thing people know about us: we never give up.”

The electoral upset in Budapest follows another significant setback for the national-populist front: Giorgia Meloni’s failure to pass her constitutional referendum on judicial reform in Italy. The Italian case is complex and serves as a powerful double-edged lesson. On the one hand, it confirms that even the most pragmatic-looking populists eventually seek to weaken the independence of the judiciary to consolidate executive power. On the other, it proves that institutional counter-powers and public opinion can still act as effective roadblocks. Yet Meloni remains both in power and notably popular, demonstrating that a populist leader can survive a defeat without losing their political grip. This ambivalence highlights the resilience of these rightwing movements: they can be checked, but they are rarely dismissed with a single blow.

Sunday’s election was a victory not just at, but for the ballot box, and people are right to treat it with enthusiasm. But we must acknowledge that national populism is designed to survive the downfall of its creators. The Hungarian people have ended Orbán’s reign, but the work of reclaiming their state has only just begun. If Magyar’s new government cannot navigate the legal traps left behind, the ghost of the old regime – and its allies in Washington and Moscow – will be ready to return. In the history of populism, the first defeat is rarely the last.