Can Elections Break Orbán’s State-Made Oligarchy? – INTERVIEW

Former bankers on Hungary's manufactured oligarchs and the struggle for change

26 November 2025

Wojciech Przybylski

Editor-in-Chief

In April 2026, after sixteen years of consecutive governments led by Viktor Orbán, Hungarians will decide if they are persuaded by the ‘war and peace’ or by Péter Magyar’s promise to confront what has come to define the system.

We sat down to speak with two insiders of Hungary’s economic and political transformation: former central banker and regional investment banker András Simor and former economy minister and governor of the National Bank of Hungary Péter Ákos Bod. They examine how Hungary’s current oligarchic order has been built from the top down, what makes it different from the Russian model and what any future government would be up against after the elections in Hungary.

This interview joins the Res Publica Foundation’s Europe Future Forum: Polish-Hungarian Perspectives – a series of high-level bilateral seminars exploring new avenues for Polish-Hungarian cooperation in economic security.

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Wojciech Przybylski

Editor-in-Chief

Political analyst heading Visegrad Insight's policy foresight on European affairs. His expertise includes foreign policy and political culture. Editor-in-Chief of Visegrad Insight and President of the Res Publica Foundation. Europe's Future Fellow at IWM - Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna and Erste Foundation. Wojciech also co-authored a book 'Understanding Central Europe’, Routledge 2017. He has been published in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, Journal of Democracy, EUObserver, Project Syndicate, VoxEurop, Hospodarske noviny, Internazionale, Zeit, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, Onet, Gazeta Wyborcza and regularly appears in BBC, Al Jazeera Europe, Euronews, TRT World, TVN24, TOK FM, Swedish Radio and others.

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